The Man With The Bat
by viktories
Summary: Negan meets Carol. Begins with S6 ep16: Last Night On Earth, goes from there. The Saviors had picked up Carol and Morgan in their round-up, after Morgan had treated her wound but before the surviving roadkill had caught up to her. Ultimately a Caryl fic. Warning: This can be pretty brutal at times and I don't put trigger-warnings on individual chapters.
1. That Night

"Well well well, what have we here?" The man with the barbed wire-wrapped baseball bat surveyed the group, savoring their realization that this was the end of the fucking road. Metaphorically and quite fucking literally: the road they'd been on wasn't a road at all, but a carefully laid track that led them precisely to where he wanted. "These the fuckers that have been causin' me so much trouble?"

Dwight leaned in, telling him where they'd found everyone - the woods, the RV, outside some library - and then stood back again smirking at one of the prisoners while fondling the crossbow cradled in his hands.

"Oh, baby...we pissing our pants yet? Oh, boy..." Negan, the man with the fucking bat, continued to talk while pacing back and forth before the group who were prostrate on their knees before him. Their fear was palpable. Fucking delicious. Their anger was barely restrained. Fucking delightful.

Negan was not a stupid man. Far from it, he was a very, very smart man. He was rambling on with whatever came to mind at that moment, but he was watching them. Each and every fucking one of them. And he was pretty sure which one of these fucking pricks would cause trouble when the time came to mete out punishment.

The beefy ginger fuck was certainly a threat, he was like a fucking bull scraping one hoof against the ground just waiting for the gate to open. The cunt with the dreads was as cold and calculating as they come, and they'd confiscated a fucking katana from her. Their leader, Rick, was probably a threat at any other time, but he was shaking in his shoes right now for gettin' them in this pickle - especially his boy - and that made him as limp as a baby's dick. His boy though, he was a different story: even one-eyed, that little fuck wasn't one to turn your back on. _Future serial killer_ , he called him, and the little prick didn't even twitch. The other fucker, the one that Dwight shot, might have been a threat any other day, he carried himself like a fighter even halfway dead from blood loss, but then again, Negan caught the looks that he shot at the little gray haired lady off to the side, and wondered what if he was a fucking mama's boy. Little old lady all hunched over had to be his mama...then he realized she was hunched over because of some kind of wound in her side, and though her hair was gray he finally saw her face and it was practically unlined and surprisingly pretty. And she looked fucking terrified.

Then again...

She _looked_ fucking terrified. But then he caught sight of her when she returned one of the man's glances and he was starting to suspect that terror might not be altogether fucking genuine. Worry, sure, and fear for the others, but the kind of mind-numbing terror of the helpless and vulnerable that she was projecting to the world right now? He was beginning to think that was a smokescreen.

He kept talking, assessing them, calculating exactly what he needed to do to break them. His normal tactics weren't going to be enough. This was a group that knew loss already, they knew how to survive it. This was a group, much like his own, that came out stronger from the tempering flames of death and destruction. They would mourn their friends and use the pain to come back tenfold at him. This wasn't the time for his normal tactics. And so he watched.

Finally the Asian fucker broke, lunging for his woman - who looked on her last legs if truth be told - in a misguided attempt to protect her. Sure as shit, three faces swiveled to look over at the gray-haired woman, looking to _her_ for guidance: Dwight's little pal, the black guy that had the stick, and, most unexpectedly!, Rick himself. Well if that wasn't the most interesting fucking tidbit he'd come across in a long fucking time. Which got him thinking...

A lot of gears that had been spinning loose in his head suddenly clicked into place.

While he considered this new revelation, this inconceivable little seed of an idea that was now blooming into just about the best fucking thing he'd ever known, he introduced them to Lucille with the deference that she demanded. He knew they were taking it all in, dread settling over them like a blanket as they waited to find out what it all meant. _Who_ they'd lose. He figured they thought they knew what he was all about, what he'd do next. Time to surprise them.

"I simply cannot fucking decide! So how about you fucks tell me which one of you is Carol?"

It was fucking priceless, truly it was. Her mouth dropped open - just a little!, barely a fraction giving her away - while panic suffused the features of the three men who'd looked to her. Dwight's little pal was bellowing about something or other, about a rocket launcher and an empty road - he hadn't been sure this group had anything to do with that fucking loss and he'd file that away for future reference - but the man would NOT shut up. He was cataloging all his sins against Negan's people in a fruitless fucking attempt to offer himself in her place, and _that_ was a mighty long list. Rick was simply bargaining with Negan, offering his entire group to them in what could only be described as indentured fucking slavery to keep that woman from meeting Lucille, but not all of them seemed so keen on the idea: the younger black twat with the cold eyes seemed especially raw with Rick at that. The black fuck with the stick just hung his head, looking like the deed was already done and he was mourning her.

But not a one of them spoke up to identify her.

"Now, this is fucking interesting. This is me putting two and two together and coming out with well more than the four I would have expected. See, I hadn't connected all the fucking dots yet. We've been watching your little safe zone for a good long time. A loooong fucking time. You drew our attention and the show has been mighty fucking interesting. I've been getting reports back about all kinds of events taking place, and I just now figured out what all those things had in common.

"We saw the Wolves attack, those fucking savages - I must say I am grateful for your efforts to scour those fuckers from the earth - but I didn't hardly give credit to the report that most of them had been taken out by - and I'm fucking quoting now - _some gray-haired housewife in a fucking cardigan._ Seems she held her own when the dead crashed your gates as well... My man watching you has become quite a fan, Carol. Quite. A. Fucking. Fan.

"Then y'all decided to bring the fight to me. You slaughtered my people in their fucking sleep," he clenched his jaw as he smacked Lucille against his leg, agitated, but sucked in some cleansing breaths and continued, "But even worse was what happened at the fucking safe-house. My people were fucking BURNED ALIVE. And whose name had come in over the radio? Who did my Paula unknowingly bring into the fucking _safe house_ \- and we can all now appreciate the fucking irony of calling a fucking _slaughter house_ by that name, can't we? - Paula brought in someone named Carol, someone that she thought was a weak link we could exploit. GODDAMN was she fucking wrong. I don't know who did what, but I'm starting to have a pretty fucking good idea.

"Because do you know what happened this morning? Just this fucking morning when my people were getting themselves in place for our little fucking surprise party? Do you know what came over the radio from the only survivor of one of my patrols? Quoting here again: some gray-haired bitch from Alexandria killed them all.

"So let's cut the shit. Carol?"

She nodded at him. He grinned, showing all his teeth. He advanced on her, stood before her, ignoring the explosion behind him as Dwight's pal lunged and Dwight knocked him flat. He tapped Lucille against his ankle, considering her. She didn't look up at him, she kept her gaze steady on whomever it was behind him screaming her name and begging him to leave her alone. He cleared his throat. She finally looked up at him and her eyes were the clearest, brightest blue he'd ever seen. They met his own, unwavering. She looked...calm, accepting. He held out his hand. She stared at it, confused, then looked back up at him and made a face like he was an imbecile, and he realized her hands were still zip-tied behind her back. He shouted for someone to release her, shaking his head and apologizing to her for the fucking inconvenience of it all.

Her hands were free and she was shaking the feeling back into them then touching her side, checking her wound. He waited, patiently, then held out his hand again. She took it. He helped her up, and she stood in front of him with her head high and her back as straight as a fucking pole despite the fresh blood spreading out across the fabric of her shirt. Not enough yet to be worried, he thought.

"What's going to happen to them?" _Them,_ she said, not _me_. He was more fucking impressed by the minute.

"Nothing. They're going to be on their way, to Hilltop or back to Alexandria, or who the fuck knows," he said to her, quieter, the raised his voice and shouted a bit more loudly in the general direction of Rick. "We'll be expecting half of what you have, and half of what you produce. Non-negotiable. That's the cost of living in these parts, and after what you've done to my people, you should count yourself very fucking lucky to just be paying in goods and services."

"And me?"

He didn't answer, not right away. He still had her hand from when he helped her up, hadn't released it yet, and he felt himself still grinning. He led her forward to stand with him at the front of the group. She wasn't looking at any of her people, she was looking only at him, and he found himself enjoying having her undivided attention. "Here's how it's going to be: I'm not going to kill any of you fuckers today, I'm going to let the rest of your people return to wherever they want to go. We'll be collecting our first pickup from the gates of the safe zone in seven days. Hear that Rick? SEVEN FUCKING DAYS," he shouted over his shoulder before quieting again. "You? You'll be coming with me." He was not surprised at the explosion of shouts, these people did not learn their fucking lessons. He motioned to Dwight, who knocked his little buddy down again - Negan saw Carol flinch at that - and another one of his men gave Rick a shotgun stock to the jaw. "You're going to be my insurance policy for their good behavior."

She nodded, once, and asked, "May I say my goodbyes?" So calm and classy, a fucking lady.

He agreed. She went first to Rick, who was dazed from the blow to his jaw, and put her hand on his shoulder. She leaned in, saying something low in his ear, and Rick glanced over at Dwight's pal. Rick nodded at her, and looked as if he might cry. Negan hoped he wouldn't. Men's tears kind of grossed him out. Just wasn't...manly, and he saw way too much of them as it was. Rick didn't cry though, and he got points in the plus column for not being a fucking child about it.

Carol then hugged Rick's boy to her, stroking his hair and then settling his hat back in place. The boy didn't cry or carry on either, he just gave Negan a look promising him hell on earth. She made her way down the rest of the line, patting shoulders or touching cheeks, asking them all to take care of themselves, and asking the ginger fuck not to let "Daryl" come after her. He figured out quick that Daryl was Dwight's buddy, and must be her man, because every single one of them glanced toward him as she moved to the next person. The man himself never looked up, he kept his eyes on the ground and sat as if carved from stone.

She saved Daryl for last. He still didn't look up at her, and she dropped to her knees in the dust and leaned forward, whispering frantically in his ear. He shook his head once, twice, and she grasped his face in her hands and forced him to look her in the eye. Daryl had tear tracks down his cheeks but he was calm, and Negan was astounded to realize he didn't think less of him for them. Daryl shook his head at her again, not saying a word. She tilted his head down and kissed him on the forehead, and Negan felt a small surge of... _something_ at that. He was shocked to find that he actually felt a measure of fucking jealousy that his woman - and she was very much _his_ fucking woman now - was this attached to this Daryl fellow. He briefly considered changing his mind about not killing any of them, but it was like she could read his fucking thoughts because she turned her head and met Negan's eyes and the warning in there was fucking implicit. If he wanted her to go with him quietly, and stay with him of her own accord, he better not touch a single fucking hair on Daryl's head. He gave a grudging nod, rolling his eyes, and she turned back to Daryl.

"Promise me. PROMISE ME," she was saying now, loud enough to be heard by more than Daryl. He shook his head again, then purposely looked away from her. She finally gave up her hold on his face, but let one hand linger on his cheek then ran it down to rest on his shoulder. "Please don't shut me out, not now," she said desperately. Daryl looked at her with such raw need that Negan twitched, Lucille a comforting weight in his hand. He didn't know what he felt just then, emotions weren't his strong suit, and this woman was causing him to feel all kinds of new fucking sensations in just the first ten minutes of making her acquaintance. "I _have_ to know that you're alive or I can't do this. So you better fucking stay alive for me," she said fiercely. "You do whatever it takes to stay alive."

"You too." He rasped, his goddamn heart in his eyes for everyone to see. Negan didn't know if he thought that was the weakest shit he'd ever witnessed, or the strongest. It was...worrisome.

"Nine lives, remember?" She got back to her feet and joined Negan as her man howled his agony at the sky.


	2. Later That Night and Two Days Later

_**AN: Didn't intend to make this multi-chapter when I first wrote it, but there was more to say.**_

 _ **I'm not going to post trigger warnings on every chapter, consider this your trigger warning for the entire story. This is a Negan story. He's a monster. Bad stuff is going to happen, really bad stuff, and you shouldn't read this if that's going to bother you. Nothing is off the table when it comes to violence, sexual assault, or character death. It's a brutal fucking world. Also, trigger warning for Caryl. This is a Caryl story at its heart, and if you don't like that pairing, don't read it.**_

 _ **You've been warned.**_

 _ **Also, not my circus and not my monkeys. I own nothing.**_

 **— Later That Night —**

Negan travelled in post-apocalyptic _style_. After leading her away from her people, Carol found herself standing in front of a giant armored Humvee that couldn't be anything but military-grade. It might have been able to seat eight or more except that the middle row of seats had been removed and replaced with a circular cage to help the person manning the machine gun turret on the roof stay upright and standing regardless of road conditions. The cage separated the driver and heavily armed guard in the passenger seat from a direct view of the back seats, the area of the vehicle she now found herself in, alone with Negan after he had scooped her up and lifted her into the vehicle like a damn bridegroom.

Her wound had been bleeding for a long time over the past day, slow but steadily draining any warmth or strength from her. She'd had a few mouthfuls of canned beans after Morgan had finished wrapping her side that morning, but nothing since then. She'd spent most of the day bound up and lying on the bare metal floor of an old van, only to be dragged out into the cold, damp night and been forced to kneel in a semicircle with her family as this man before her threatened and tormented them. Her head was fuzzy, her legs and arms felt weak and floppy, and her gut ached with tension and hunger. She betrayed none of that to him.

She had tried to separate herself from him, ducking into the far seat and sitting half-turned, her legs crossed at an angle to block him from sitting closer. It had worked, at first. He sat down at a distance, eyeing her with that same grin on his face, as his men settled in around them and the motorcade began to roll out. But it didn't last. A half hour into the ride, after staring at each other silently – him with that shit-eating grin, her face blank and unyielding – he simply reached over, grabbed her by the ankle and dragged her across the gulf that separated them, half her body still on the seat and half dragging along the floor. She ended up on her back, one leg straight up in the air held by his meaty fist, the other bent slightly backwards but wedged against the ground and keeping her from falling. Her ass was halfway across his lap, her arms flung back from trying to catch hold of something, _anything_ , to keep her from ending up exactly where she was.

She tried to sit up and his free hand pressed down on her middle, holding her in place. He looked down on her, eyes hooded, and licked his lips. All the fight drained out of her as panic set in. She knew that look. "Don't fucking move," he said, his voice low and husky. "I know what you're thinking, I know that primitive part of your fucking brain is taking over and starting up that fight or flight reflex, but don't. You. Fucking. Move."

She'd been conditioned by Ed too well. She responded to the threat in his voice, the barely restrained violence, by freezing in place. She was breathing shallowly, panting, her eyes wide and pupils blown. Someone who didn't know the situation would think she was overcome with desire not terror. Lust, not the mental and physical lethargy of accepting the pain, the humiliation, the shame of what now seemed inevitable.

He continued to hold her one leg in the air but now bent toward her, and he pushed the other knee farther out. Without her hip between them, with her ass half on his thigh, her body was angled so that her legs spread out and left her open to him, presented like a gift waiting to be unwrapped. He ran his free hand down her thigh, across the crotch of her cargo pants pressing firmly at the flesh beneath, and along the other thigh to her knee. He did it repeatedly, stroking her possessively, as she whimpered in fear and disgust. He snaked that hand up beneath her shirt, fondling her breasts roughly before pinching first one then the other nipple, hard, hard enough to bring tears to her eyes.

He was talking to her, but she couldn't make sense of it. All of the words themselves were recognizable, but they didn't make sense in the order he was saying them, and she couldn't straighten them out. She was fighting too hard to keep the panic down, to hold it in and not start screaming and begging for him not to hurt her like that. "If I weren't such a fucking gentleman," he growled, "I'd fuck you right here in front of my men." It was gibberish, what he was saying. "We're not living in the fucking Middle Ages, I don't need witnesses, but I can at least see what's waiting for me when we get home." He flicked open a blade and ran it along the frayed, worn seam of her pants, splitting them open, pushing the crotch of her panties out of the way and running one rough, violating finger across her outer lips before touching her. Violating her. She couldn't stop herself, she reacted violently, bucking away from him with all her strength and twisting, wrenching open the knife wound on her side as she fell to the floor, face first, and passed out into merciful darkness.

 **— Two Days Later —**

It was the pain in her mouth that woke her.

Her teeth ached, her lips were swollen, and her whole mouth felt gummed shut. She exercised her jaw, opening wide to stretch her mouth, and felt her lips crack. She tasted copper. For a moment, a wonderful terrible moment, she thought she was back in her house, waking up after a bad night with Ed, and her baby girl would be waiting for her in her room, tucked under her pink and yellow quilt. She tried to hold on to that feeling, tried to convince herself that it was real, but even coming out of unconsciousness she knew that wasn't the case. Ed was dead but so was Sophia, and she was in danger.

Carol had years of experience with quickly assessing the damage to her body upon regaining consciousness, and making a call as to whether she needed treatment or not. She started with her head: besides the pain and obvious damage to her mouth, and the fuzzy-headedness brought on by prolonged unconsciousness, she determined her head was fine. Next most important in this new world: her legs. Could she run if needed? Could she kick? Yes. Legs were fine. Feet were bare, but fine. Hands, arms, all usable, but there was something attached to her arm and digging into her hand. She recognized it: IV. She was in a medical facility. Grady? No. Grady was past, Beth was dead. Some other place. Next, torso. Harder to assess without moving, possibly drawing attention to herself, showing she had regained consciousness. She didn't have a choice, she had to be prepared. She shifted, felt the pain in her side. Not her ribs, nothing broken, but there was a pull in her skin so that meant stitches. Surgery? A wound? A stab wound.

Negan.

Negan's hand, touching her. The knife, thinking he was going to cut her _there_. Negan's fingers. His fucking fingers. His fingers, _fucking_. Fucking her. She felt tears gathering in the corners of her eyes, leaking out and down onto the pillow. She had been helpless. He had _touched_ her.

"I've bought you as much time as I can," a soft voice said near her right ear. "His man saw you stir, went to find him. I'm sorry, I wish I could have kept you out longer."

Carol cracked open one eye, looked at the woman standing next to her. She was dressed in surgical scrubs, her black hair was pulled back tight from her face. She didn't smile, she looked concerned. "You came in unconscious, the stab wound in your side bleeding. Looked like it had been seeping for hours." Carol nodded at her. "You'd lost a good amount of blood but we had some on tap. You were moderately dehydrated and malnourished so I set you up with some IV fluids. But I was more concerned about your teeth." Carol's eyes widened in horror and she reached up toward her mouth, probing her teeth with her tongue. She wasn't sure but if felt like her front teeth wiggled a bit. "Negan said you fell face first onto the floor of the Humvee, and struck your mouth on a metal ridge. Your two front teeth were slightly loosened, but we were able to move them back into place and I used dental glue to splint them to your surrounding teeth to keep them from coming out. You'll have to be very careful over the next week or so to keep your teeth from getting pushed around. I think with a another day of rest here and then taking it easy for a week, you should be fine. I'll try to buy you as much time as I can."

"Thank you," Carol whispered, her mouth having trouble working. "Could I get some water?"

"OH! Yes! I'm so sorry," the doctor said, bustling around. "I forgot how thirsty one gets when you've been getting all your fluids through IV." She returned with a bottle of lukewarm water, and Carol sipped it slowly. It helped to have someone else there, easing her into whatever this new world was. "I need to do a full history for you, medical and some demographic. Boss's orders. You up for that?"

Carol nodded. The doctor sat down on a stool close to the bed, a sheath of papers on a clipboard and a ballpoint pen in hand. "I'll try not to make you speak too much. Full name?"

"Carol Peletier." She sipped more water.

"I'm going to give you an approximate age of 36 to 46. Boss prefers it. Sound right?" Carol nodded, warily, wondering in what circumstances an age range would make more sense, then deciding she couldn't think too hard about that right now. "I've got your height and weight. Race is caucasian. Highest level of education?"

"Completed?"

"Yes, please."

"Masters in Anthropology. Emory University."

"Oh my. Excellent program there. PhD candidate? Should I put your occupation as student pre-turn?"

"Yes. And no to my occupation." Carol looked her in the eye, then looked away. "School was a long time ago. I was a stay-at-home mom."

The doctor raised one eyebrow but continued. "Any foreign languages? Special skills?"

"Used to be fluent in Portuguese and Ticuna. Fieldwork in Brazil. Skills? First Aid and CPR, though my certification has lapsed," she smiled grimly. It felt strange to talk about these things. Even before the world went to shit, she never really talked about who she was before Ed. And after, no one asked. "Identifying poisonous snakes in the Amazonian rainforest, and making a mean tuna noodle casserole." She babbled on about laundry and baking cookies and building an outrigger canoe with a hatchet and some rope. It must have been the drugs, she was a bubbling font of useless information about things she'd been able to do in the distant past mixed up with the domestic chores she'd used as part of her disguise in Alexandria.

The doctor watched her closely, making an occasional notation. As Carol's flood of dubious accomplishments trickled to an end, she sat still and pondered Carol for a time, brow wrinkled.

"We're going to move on to medical history, starting with birth history. Pregnancies?"

"Three," Carol said quietly.

"Live births?"

"One."

 **— — — — —**

The doctor had only just finished her physical exam and still had the privacy curtain in place when they both heard the door crash open.

"Well hello again, my clumsy little butterfly," Carol cringed at the sound of his voice. He was loud, and his presence seemed to fill the room and suck out all the air. She met the doctor's eyes and imagined hers were just as bulging with fear and anxiety. The doctor mouthed _trust me_ at Carol just as Negan flung back the curtain. "Doctor? How's our patient?"

She watched the doctor inject something into her IV, and it felt cold in her veins, colder than the fluids she'd been living off of for days. The cold calmed her, she watched Negan and his henchmen fill the room as if she was watching a movie in the old days, dislocated from the scene and only somewhat interested knowing what would happen next.

The doctor stepped forward, clipboard in hand, conducting a formal assessment as if on rounds with her colleagues and not providing the health history of a prisoner to a sociopathic warlord during the apocalypse. "The patient presented with a puncture wound to her right side and injury to her right and left central incisors. I was able to treat the abdominal trauma surgically, the only organ damage was a laceration to the right lobe of the liver. I splinted the right and left central maxillary incisors to the surrounding teeth using dental glue. If allowed to heal without any further trauma, she should not have any further issues with her teeth."

Negan nodded, understanding the gist of what the doctor was saying: serious but not critical wounds, needs rest and time to recover if he wants her healthy with her teeth intact. He understood, but it didn't mean he was happy. "How long?" He asked brusquely.

"Two more days in here, then another six once released. Ten days. Minimum."

Negan scowled. "One more day in here, then she gets four out there. One week. This isn't Club fucking Med." Carol was amused by the negotiations going on, she'd never had more than a day or two reprieve to recover from the worst of Ed's ministrations, and anything since the turn had been recovery on the fly. "The rest?"

The doctor shot Carol a glance, a warning. "I conducted a full physical and gynecological exam while the patient was unconscious, including x-rays. She has extensive bone remodeling of her hands, arms, and ribs, indicating prolonged physical abuse, but nothing more recent than the turn. There are scars on her abdomen, breasts, buttocks, and back that support that history. She has given birth, once, approximately 14 years ago." Carol's breath hitched. Even in her numbness, the reminder of Sophia, that _Sophia would be 14 years old now_ , still produced a throbbing, dull ache in her soul. She schooled her features, unwilling to give him any ammunition. "She came in suffering from moderate dehydration and malnourishment, consistent with being outside of Sanctuary, but her mouth injury will prevent her from having solid foods during her recovery. I'm going to prescribe a diet of protein shakes and smoothies until her teeth have stabilized."

"And the rest?"

"Sir, Carol has had a difficult life, even before the turn. She completed high school, had some college courses, but was primarily a homemaker and then stay-at-home mom. My assessment is that she is psychologically stable, despite everything, and capable of physical labor, but my recommendation is that she be employed in either the kitchen or the cleaning crew."

"Sarah," he said patiently, though with an edge of irritation. "You misunderstand. Carol is my fucking wife."

The doctor, Sarah, turned back to look at Carol with wide eyes and a gaping mouth. This woman was nothing like Negan's typical choice in "partner," and the lies she told on Carol's behalf in an effort to secure her a less stressful work order could easily backfire if Carol gave her away, if Carol was as willing for the relationship – and the comfortable lifestyle it afforded – as some of his other wives had been. Her panic receded a bit as she watched Carol's reaction to Negan's statement.

Carol had blocked it out, ignored it, all the things he had said to her in the Humvee as they drove away from Alexandria. She remembered now and nausea washed over her, panic settling in her brain like a flock of screeching birds, their wings stirring up all the dust and debris of her past. She wasn't anyone's wife. Not anymore. _Not again_.

It was hard to breathe, she couldn't get enough oxygen and she was gasping. She twisted, trying to sit up, trying to get off that bed and somewhere with air, somewhere outside. She felt hands holding her down, they were killing her, she was _suffocating_ but they wouldn't let her up, and she was clawing at them, striking and kicking, trying to get free when something sharp jabbed into her arm and oxygen rushed back in. Or maybe it didn't and she just didn't care.

Oblivion was waiting for her, a pool of stillness she could drown in and she welcomed it. As she sank back into blessed silence, that voice in the back of her mind whispered _this is how it needs to be_. It sounded familiar, deep and harsh, and she was flooded with the sensation of floating, not sinking, as the voice promised _this too shall pass_. Some days that voice was the only thing keeping her sane. She feared that most days were going to be like that now.


	3. Three, Maybe Three and Half Days

**— Three, Maybe Three and a Half Days —**

It was the pain in her mouth that woke her. Again.

Not her teeth this time, but the thickness of her tongue, the parched dryness of her throat, the desiccated quality of her lips and the fine web of cracking at the corners of her mouth that stung and wept blood and whatever fluid it was that made exposed muscle look so wet and slimy when skin was peeled back. _Mucus_? she wondered, then gave a few seconds over to mourning for the loss of Google, not for the first time. Whatever the fluid was, it was disgusting.

It only took a moment to acclimate herself, she was still in the infirmary area. She made some cursory movements, testing the pull on her stitches, the soreness in her muscles, the firm setting of her teeth, and guessed that she'd been out at least 24 hours but no more than 48. If nothing else, Carol's self-awareness about her body's timeframe and capacity to heal from injuries was spot-on. Ed might not have left her with the healthiest sense of self-worth but goddamn if she couldn't predict the state of healing of a dislocated shoulder down to the hour. Judging by the nerve pain around the sutures, the soreness of the surrounding muscles, and the general itching over that whole area, she'd estimate she'd been unconscious for another full day, maybe day and a half. And now she was PISSED.

They'd drugged her again. Unnecessarily. To keep her docile. She sat up, scraping her teeth over the thick layer of gunk coating her tongue from (24? 36?) hours of unconsciousness and spat it onto the floor next to the bed while ripping the IV out of her arm. She used the snowy white bedsheet draped over her body to staunch the trickle of blood left behind, then swung her legs over the side, pausing to allow the wave of dizziness and nausea to pass. _My ship's a sail, can you hear its tender frame, screaming from beneath the waves, screaming from beneath the waves._ She sang it in her head, like she always did when she was hurting and needed a distraction. _All hands on deck at dawn, sailing to sadder shores. Your port in my heavy storms, harbors the blackest thoughts._ It was a favorite song of her youth, from back before she understood what it meant. From back before she ever knew what it meant to scream so no one else could hear. _I'm at sea again._

The doctor chose that moment to enter the room, stopping in her tracks when Carol looked up and met her eye. "I...I thought it would be best..."

Carol coughed, spitting again, enjoying the sight of the thick glob of yellow mucus stained with red tendrils that landed on the floor below her dangling feet. Everything was clean in here, pristine. She wanted to paint the walls with blood and piss and viscera. She wanted to choke the life out of the woman who put her under and left her exposed in this _place_. In _his_ place. "For whom?" She croaked, her fist balling up the ridiculous hospital gown they dressed her in while she was unconscious. It wasn't the same one she'd woken up in before. They'd undressed her while she was out, touched her bare skin, redressed her, all without a single goddamn person around who knew her or cared to protect her when she was unable to protect herself.

She'd gone with him for her family, to save them from the destruction that seemed to follow her everywhere, never thinking she'd be so exposed. Behind enemy lines, kept drugged and unconscious, with no knowledge of what was done to her body while she was out cold. No knowledge besides the evidence on her skin: she'd been stripped naked, partially bathed, and redressed. At the very least. She could take a lot of physical abuse, of _violation_ \- could live through it and keep going - but only if she was aware of it. It was the unknown that would haunt her.

The doctor stepped forward, aiming for the IV pole, pretending at casual professionalism that must have served her well in the old world, but that world was dead. Carol's arm shot out, her hand gripping the woman's wrist and squeezing, so tight she could feel the small bones begin to grind together. She knew it hurt, it hurt like fucking hell, because Ed had done it to her more times than she could count. "WHO? WHO FUCKING TOUCHED ME?"

The doctor frantically pulled away from her, panicking at the violence of her attack and swearing it was only her. Carol's grip broke as she was pulled from the bed and fell to the floor. Her knees hit the cold tile with bruising force, one of them landing smack on the glob of spit she'd hawked up earlier, and she felt a desperate giggle well up in her throat. All the familiar injuries...all the familiar sensations: shooting pain, gut-wrenching nausea, the copper taste of blood in her mouth, huddled on the floor in a combat zone wondering if she'd live through the night. She began to laugh at the absurdity of it, on her hands and knees with her head bowed kneeling in her own fluids. _I'm at sea again._

"Where are my fucking clothes?"

 **— — — —**

She got her clothes back, including her boots and belt, and the empty sheath that once held the knife that Daryl gave her. Her most prized possession, the knife that Negan took away as he walked her away from her people, a lamb to the sacrifice. She flicked her thumb over the tooled leather that Daryl had cut and stitched and riveted together specially for her, for the knife that he gave her so that she could protect herself. So that she could live. She stroked her fingertips over the mark he'd stamped in the leather, an abstract design of five triangles arranged around two concentric circles. She'd known it was a Cherokee rose without him having to say a word. Her knife was gone, but she still had something of him.

Something, but nothing. What did she really have of him after all? What had he ever really given her? A weapon for killing and a scrap of tanned flesh with some shapes pressed into it. Death and scars. Isn't that all they ever _really_ had between them? She had thought there was more, once upon a time, when she thought there might still be a happy ending in that drafty castle they called home, complete with towers and a dry moat of spikes waiting for dead bodies to impale themselves on them. She'd been so naive. How could she have ever thought she was the princess in that story? Prince Charming wasn't there to rescue her, let alone woo her, he had his sights on a fairer maiden.

It didn't matter anyway. That was all in the past. Ancient history. None of it mattered now. _If I can't be the princess, then goddammit, I'll be the dragon. I'll raze this place to the ground._

She pulled on her clothes, wincing as stiff muscles were forced to bend and pull after days of dormancy. Her fingers struggled to work the buckles of her boots, the buttons on her pants, aching and sore. It was all so familiar. This was reality, this was who she was; that time in between, from when they left the quarry until she woke up in this bed, that was the dream. A dream of companionship, of family, of maybe even love. It was never real. She was still trapped, bound to a violent asshole with no chance of escape, _this_ was what life was: it was lonely, filled with pain and regret; happiness was an illusion, love was a lie, and even your brother would leave you to die if it suited him.

She unbuckled her belt, determined to pull the sheath off and throw it in the garbage can, but stopped herself. She was a grown woman, not a pouting teenager, and there'd be other knives that would need a sheath. No reason to throw away a perfectly good one, no matter that the sight of it filled her mouth with bitter gall.

 _Other knives would fill this sheath,_ she thought grimly. _It still has some life in it yet._

 **— — — —**

The blonde man with the scarred face and Daryl's crossbow lead her through the tangled maze of hallways. She paced behind him, counting her steps, counting the doors, scuffing her feet on the tile floor at the corners to leave marks. She ignored the bow, bouncing against his back, the same bow she'd carried out of Terminus hoping it was a sign of life but convinced it meant only his death. The bow she passed to him in the forest after he raced to her, arms wrapping her up, lifting her from the ground and pressing his face into the crook of her neck. This man, this blonde man, he killed Denise with that bow, tried to kill Daryl.

So much killing.

She didn't want to kill anymore. She tallied up the lives she'd taken, felt the price too high. Felt the weight on her soul. Felt it breaking her. She thought that loving them meant having to kill for them, that it was the only way to protect them, and she had to protect them. Her family. It wasn't the killing that was breaking her, it was the love. It was a burden she carried, her love, because it was hers alone. No one shared it with her. No one knew the lengths she went to for them, _what I have done or what would do in this blind, bitter land_. It was a day for quotes from her past, a day for memories.

She didn't want to kill anymore, but she never did manage to get what she wanted. She wanted a husband who loved her. She wanted to see her daughter grow up. She wanted to contribute, and she wanted them to respect and value her for it. She wanted them to love her as much as she loved them. She wanted to protect them, all of them, but especially all the children that had fallen around her - because of her - she had wanted them all to have the chance her Sophia never had.

She wanted him to choose her.

She should have known. She never got what she wanted.

None of it mattered. Not anymore. It wasn't about her, what _she_ wanted, it never was. She wasn't the princess in this story, she didn't get to have the prince. She was the dragon. And this man? This blonde man carrying Daryl's bow? He was going to understand what that meant. She may not want to kill, but she was used to sacrificing her own wants, her own needs, for the wants and needs of others. He was already dead, he just didn't know it yet.

So intent was she on the man with the crossbow that she didn't realize they had passed through a doorway where a set of double doors had been thrown open and pinned back, until the man stopped in his tracks and dropped to his knee, and she was standing before Negan while every other person around her cowered against the ground. He tilted his head, gaze intense, assessing her. Measuring her. If his expression was any indication, he didn't find her wanting.

"Well hello there, darlin'," he said cheerily, smiling wide, his face lighting up just a bit. "I am pleased — as — fuck — to see you. You feelin' better?"

 **— — — —**

If the events in the infirmary had been absurd, then this was just plain surreal.

Negan had been standing with his chair pushed back, his hand resting on the grip of the wire-wrapped bat lying on the surface of the table before him. When he saw her, addressed her, smiling even wider at her wary nod, he came around that table and approached her, the bat swinging from his left hand as he took hold of hers with his right. His hand was warm and dry, rough with callouses, of a size that swallowed her own up in it. He took her hand and lead her from the room, not letting it go, and it was several minutes and several rooms off of anonymous hallways before she realized he was giving her a tour.

Not a few minutes later they were standing in the doorway of a cavernous room, the upper reaches criss-crossed with catwalks, looking out over a sea of vehicles and schools of people like drably colored fish darting this way and that doing things to them. Fixing, cleaning, packing, unpacking...every person seemed to work in synch with every other, a factory floor of automatons going about their business. Negan was explaining something to her, dropping her hand to point in various directions, his tone and body language projecting pride, but she had no idea what he'd been saying. She crossed her arms and angled back, watching him with a bemused expression, half-curious and half-dreading what this attention from him could mean. He seemed to want her approval, her praise, and she debated withholding it but decided that this was not the time to toy with the man.

"What you've done here is truly remarkable," she said, infusing her voice with an admiration that she was surprised to realize she genuinely felt. "It's impressive. I am impressed." She chuckled, letting her eyes sweep over the area noting exits, entrances, access points. "Overwhelmed, but impressed."

His grin got even wider, not looking out anymore but just at her, and he tapped the bat against his leg. His brow wrinkled for a moment as if he were debating with himself, then smoothed out. Decision made. He leaned forward, catching her off guard, and planted a kiss on her mouth. Lips closed but firm, determined but not forceful, and she was too shocked to respond in any manner. He tilted his head back, studying her, then leaned in again. This time she was ready.

This time she kissed him back.

 **— — — —**

He took her hand again, leading her away from the controlled chaos to a fire door that opened on a stairwell leading up. He began to climb the stairs, swiftly, pulling her behind him, and the days of unconsciousness, lack of food, blood loss, and pain from her injuries caught up with her. She felt the ground tilt as everything began to dim, and she heard him faintly swearing in the background before light turned to black.

This time, when she woke up, she wasn't in the infirmary and she wasn't alone. She was in a dimly lit room, lying on a bed, and the doctor hovered over her with a firm two-fingered grip on her wrist, checking her pulse. She looked around blearily, spotting Negan standing behind the doctor, a thunderous look on his face that resolved to a tentative smile as he noticed her blinking up at him. "You fuckin' scared me, darlin'," he said, chagrined, "in my haste I forgot you were still recoverin'. M'sorry."

Carol heard a faint indrawn breath from the doctor, and flicked her eyes over to see wide-eyed, slack-jawed shock staring down at her. Carol focused on him, smiling softly. "Honestly, I kinda forgot too, or I would have said something earlier." That earned her another grin, but there was nothing wolfish or threatening about this one, it was equal parts pleased and relieved. It made him look ten years younger. It reminded her of Daryl's shy smiles that she sometimes earned, when he looked up at her through the fringe of his bangs making her heart ache and her thighs clench. A jagged shot of pain lanced through her chest, but just as quickly it was gone, and she didn't move as Negan shuffled the doctor out the door and crossed the room back to her. She didn't reach down and run her fingertips over the leather sheath lying empty at her side.

He stood over her for what seemed like forever, staring down at her where she was lying flat on her back on the bed, and it should have made her uncomfortable but it didn't. His hands rested on his hips as he considered her, thoughtfully, and she squelched the desire to look around the room for the baseball bat. Instead she stared right back at him, not challenging but not submitting, meeting his gaze and holding it. After a time, he looked away towards the door and let out a pained sigh. "Food should be here in a few minutes, if you want to take a piss or wash up or anything," he said noncommittally, still looking away.

She nodded, knowing he could see her in his peripheral vision, and sat up, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. He stepped back a pace then held out his hands, ignoring her surprise as she let him help her up. He gestured towards another door in the far wall and she stepped around him and crossed the room feeling the weight of his eyes on her. Wondering what he saw when he looked at her, and why it seemed so troubling to him.

She closed the door behind her before fumbling for the light switch, disgusted with herself at how easily she reverted to old expectations after such a short time in Alexandria. That place was making them all soft. She flicked the switch and the light came on, and wondered if it gave them any advantage at all over the Saviors since her family was still relatively unused to having these little luxuries. Maybe. Maybe not. She used the toilet, enjoying the novelty of real toilet paper - fairly soft to boot - and washed her hands at the sink under warm water before drying them on a black towel that was hanging on a rack behind her. Only then, with her hands bunching up the thick, velvety terrycloth, did she realize that she was in Negan's private bathroom, and had been lying on his bed.

She looked in the mirror then, not having done so up until that moment, and studied her reflection. It looked the same to her. Same gray hair, longer than it had been in fifteen years, long enough to curl around her ears and against the collar of her shirt. Same pale skin dotted with dark spots and mapped with lines. Same blue eyes. Nothing remarkable, nothing inspiring about her face, her body, she was nothing much at all next to the beauty of the other women she knew. She was a middle-aged housewife and looked it compared to Maggie, Michonne, Rosita, Sasha... _Beth_. She shook her head, disgusted with herself for even going there, and exited the small room shutting off the light behind her.

Negan was almost to the door, responding to a knock. He flung it open and the blonde man was standing there, one hand gripping Negan's bat and the other cradling a dishpan full of containers. His back was to her as he accepted the bat with the sounds of relief one expects to hear when lovers reunite, and the blonde man looked over Negan's shoulder at her with an unnameable expression. She glared back at him, not caring that he see her hate, it shouldn't be a big secret that she despised him after what he'd done. He nodded at her, one bob of his head, and handed off the dishpan before withdrawing from the doorway and shutting the door. Negan leaned in to flick the lock with the arm wrapped around the pan, unwilling to set his bat down just yet. She could hear him mumbling that he was sorry he left her behind, and Carol felt a sick thrill when she figured out what that meant: when she fainted on the stairs, Negan had dropped his bat to catch her, and he'd been the one to carry her to his room.

It was a disturbing thought. Clearly for his henchman as well.

Finally noticing her there, Negan smiled and set the bat down on a stand custom-made for it, down to the intricate script of the name "Lucille" carved into the wooden cross-brace at the top. He gave the handle a pat before walking back to her, and as he closed in she caught a whiff of some deliciousness emanating from the containers in his hands. "We're long past the dinner hour but I had them warm us up some food. Got no place to fuckin' sit in here so I hope you don't mind the floor." She didn't mind at all, not if it got her access to whatever was inside that Tupperware he was teasing her with, and she collapsed against the side of the bed and pulled her knees up, wrapping her arms around them to muffle the obscenely loud grumbling in her tummy as she waited. He laughed softly, dropping down next to her and setting the tub between his outstretched legs and her folded ones, their backs against the bed, and she tried to keep her hands to herself as he unpacked the contents. "Looks like we got ourselves some pot roast," he said, triumphantly, passing her a deep bowl filled with tender meat, chunks of potato and carrot, and a thick, fragrant gravy. She was about to crook her fingers into a scoop before he handed her a spoon and napkin from the bottom of the tub, chuckling. "I almost hesitate to tell you this, but there's bread too."

Her mouth was full of beef, _actual beef_ , with another spoonful of potato on its way and she couldn't help it, she closed her eyes and moaned. She'd forgotten what this tasted like, something that had once been her favorite meal for Sunday dinners with...Ed. Sophia. She bit down hard and felt a twinge of pain in her front teeth, tears filling her eyes as she dropped her spoon and covered her mouth, the pain in her teeth so much less material than the pain in her soul.

"Jesus fuckin' Christ I forgot about your goddamn teeth!" he barked, slamming his fist on the ground. She instinctively fell back from him, gravy sloshing over the rim of her bowl as she crawled backwards, and he threw up his hands and leaned back, away from her, saying things that she couldn't make out in a tone that didn't sound angry. Not angry with her. She halted her backwards flight, staring down at the greasy stain spreading across her shirt and the container of roast spilling out on the carpet from where she dropped it in her panic. Now that was a tragedy. She crawled forward again, looking to salvage what she could of her meal, but he got there before her and stopped her, holding out one hand, while he set the container back upright and tossed some napkins down on the mess on the floor.

She wanted to cry, and she must have looked it because he sat back on his haunches and shook his head, setting the container behind him with the rest of the food and resting both hands on his thighs while he stared at her. "I hope you realize this is just as fuckin' confusin' for me as it is for you," he said, slowly shaking his head again but maintaining eye contact. "We didn't meet under the best fuckin' conditions, and I'll confess I was in a killing' rage that night. At least one of you was gonna fuckin' die, right up until I connected all the fuckin' dots about who you were. What happened in that vehicle, that was not my best moment. That was me losin' control, and that ain't somethin' I do very fuckin' often." He looked uncomfortable with talking to her about it, almost ashamed? "What happened in the vehicle… that was a mistake. I took fuckin' advantage. You agreein' to come with me, to me that was agreein' to become one of my wives, and I was too fuckin' pissed off at that piece of shit Rick to remember you had no goddamn idea. But here we are, and no fuckin' backin' out now, Carol, you've accrued too much debt with all your injuries, and you takin' on the sins of your people."

He studied her, watching for every expression, every reaction to what he was saying. She allowed only the tiniest flicker of fear, then one of resentment at mention of her people. He seemed satisfied. He looked goddamn smug at that.

"But here we are," he repeated. "And after so many months of hearin' stories about you and your people, I fuckin' forget that we really just met a few days ago - and for most of that intervenin' time you were unconscious - and that you don't know a single goddamn thing about me. Despite what happened before you knew what your place was, I'm not such a bad guy." He gave her a boyish grin, and she let herself respond, letting it appear as though she couldn't help but smile back at him. Letting herself be charmed. Once she responded, he became very serious. "Because the most important thing you should know, Carol, that _you_ especially should know, is that no man in my service lays a hand - not even a fuckin' finger - on a woman or a child in violence. Not if they want to live. No man touches a woman without her permission, I fuckin' promise you that. Not in MY house."

She searched his face for any sign of duplicity, for any possible micro-expression that might give it all away as a lie he was telling her to lull her into complacency, but there was nothing. He was telling her the truth, a truth that he believed to be absolute, and it was too much for her. She couldn't begin to examine her own feelings about the situation, let alone identify what they were, not after a crushing wave of sadness tried to drown her where she sat. On impulse, with no idea what might have prompted her to do so, she crawled toward him until she was kneeling in front of him, wrapped her arms around him and collapsed sobbing against his chest. There was not a second's hesitation before she felt his own arms around her, not at all tentatively or with any discomfort, no, his arms were around her and holding her tight in a heartbeat, not with grudging acceptance but enthusiastic delight, and it broke her heart just a little more.


	4. Five Days and The Sixth Day

**— Five Days —**

Her muscles were pulsing around him, making her even tighter than the goddamn vice grip she already was. He groaned, letting her throbbing pussy milk him dry, wondering which would come first: him gettin' tired of her or her gettin' stretched out. Genuinely not knowing the answer to that was troubling, and he didn't like it. He didn't like it one fucking bit.

He rolled off her, not pushing her away but not pulling her toward him like he'd been doing. She was still too distracted by the dregs of her orgasm to notice his change in mood. That made him angrier. She was supposed to notice these things, respond accordingly. Show some goddamn healthy respect for her place here.

"I bet _Daryl_ never made you come like that," he spat the man's name out, like it was something nasty caught in his throat. He folded his arms behind his head and glared at the ceiling, feeling her body tense the same time she sucked in air sharply. _Good_.

"No, he hasn't," she said coldly, rolling on her side away from him.

"Don't you fuckin' turn your back on me," he growled, not moving, not even looking. Didn't need to. She rolled back and he glanced over, expecting fear, trepidation, at the very least some fucking caution. He didn't expect anger. He did a double-take, his hands coming out from beneath his head and he tilted up towards her, which normally might be perceived as intimidating but apparently she didn't get fucking memo.

"Why do you say things like that? Why do you have to bring him into this?" She hissed at him, her pale blue eyes like ice. He had the urge to hit someone but it wasn't her. She knew that so she didn't flinch away, and he was perversely cheered up by having her trust him like that.

"I guess it don't matter what he did," he said generously, rolling onto his side and stroking the soft hair at her temple with one finger. "What matters is what _we_ do."

She didn't pull away from him but she didn't have to. It was like touching an ice sculpture. "You promised you'd leave him be, and this kind of shit makes me doubt that you will. You need to forget about him."

He wasn't angry, exactly, but he was feeling something pretty negative towards her right now, but not as negative as towards that fuckface back in Alexandria that she was trying to protect. "I don't like having your ex out there, thinking I'm getting his sloppy seconds," he spat at her, hoping for a reaction, hoping maybe she'd do or say something that would give him an out on that stupid fuckin' promise he made. What he didn't expect was her bursting into laughter. Prolonged laughter, him getting more and more annoyed the longer she gasped and giggled and shook. She finally calmed down, wiping her eyes, and looking at him with something akin to amused affection. She rested one hand on his chest, letting her fingers flex and her nails dig in to the hard muscle as she settled back against her pillow and shot him a soft glance, her lips quirked into a half smile.

"It was never like that, between him and me," she said, her nails scratching him lightly sending a pleasant shiver down his spine. "He's not my ex. We've never even kissed."

He was having a hard time believing that, given the man's reaction at the greeting party and the reports he'd heard. She was lying to him and now he was getting really pissed. "You expect me to fuckin' believe that? I heard you were spending every night at his house, you'd practically moved in?"

She raised one eyebrow, and he groaned inwardly realizing he'd said too much, but she didn't seem to catch the slip, only his tone. "Negan, that wasn't Daryl. We already lived in the same house with Rick and Carl and Michonne. The man you are referring to is someone else, and he didn't mean anything to me, he was just a distraction."

He vaguely recalled then that it _was_ a different name. "What was the distraction's name? No, don't go gettin' your fuckin' panties in a bunch, I'm trying to figure out where the misunderstanding occurred."

"Tobin."

"And Daryl's last name?"

"Dixon."

He nodded, muttering "that fuckin' explains it," to himself then smiled brightly at her. "Alright, darlin', this ones on me," he said, pulling her in close and giving her a kiss. "But I'm still having trouble believin' nothing ever happened between you and Dixon, not the way he was fuckin' lookin' at you."

She shrugged, a flash of pain shooting across he features so quickly that he might have easily missed it, had he been a less perceptive fellow. "Hey now, what's that about? You can tell me," he crooned softly, watching tears well up in her big blue eyes like the ice was melting and the run-off was about to spill over. She scraped at her eyes, but ended up sniffling against his chest has he hugged her tight.

"There might have been something, once, ages ago back in Georgia. We were living in this prison, and it seemed like we had a safe place, a home, and I thought...he seemed interested in being more than friends but something happened." She curled into herself, pulling away from him just a bit, so he squeezed tighter. "I made a mistake, a bad one, and people died. Rick kicked me out...took me out on a supply run and left me, told me not to come back. I thought maybe Daryl would come looking for me, but he didn't." More tears, slicking up the skin on his chest, her breath hot then cold on his skin, like when she was sucking him off and then blew on it, and he felt his prick start to twitch. "Later on, I ran into the group again, out on the road. The prison had been attacked, only a handful had survived, and they welcomed me back into the fold," she said, the bitterness thickening as she spoke. "Daryl was happy to see me, but apparently out of sight, out of mind. He was...mourning someone else. He'd found someone else, a girl, a goddamn teenager."

Angry tears were spilling down her cheeks, the memory of the humiliation. He was all twisted up listening to her, feeling outraged and angry on her behalf, but also satisfaction: this woman, this goddamn amazing woman, this fucking _goddess_ , was _his_. None of them _saw_ her, they never _knew_ her. Dixon never _had_ her. He saw her. He knew her. And he fuckin' had her. As often as he wanted, and right now that was a _lot_.

"It's all okay, darlin', you're with me now. I know the value of a woman like you. I'll never fuckin' take you for granted," he whispered into her hair as he held her close, one hand gently rubbing circles on her back as she cried. "Now how about you get yourself cleaned up a bit then I'll have Dwight take you back to your room. It's going to be a long day tomorrow and we both need some sleep." She nodded against him, sniffling, before placing gentle kisses on his chest, cheek, and mouth, scampering away from the bed as he gave her a playful smack on the ass heading towards his bathroom. He watched her cross the room, admiring the lines of her, all lean muscle and fine as fuck, with those long legs and DEAR LORD that ass. He laid back again, arms pillowing his head, contemplating a change in plans, then crossed the room and opened his bedroom door. He stood in the doorway filling Dwight in on his brilliant idea while the man tried to look anywhere but down.

 **— — — —**

Carol stood at the sink, looking at herself in the mirror. The water was running but she ignored it, staring at her reflection with loathing. She used Daryl. She used _them_ , to placate Negan's ego.

Nothing she said was wrong, none of it. It just wasn't right either.

She'd been surprised at her own bitterness when telling him about Rick, Daryl... Beth...but not really surprised, all of it was still painfully fresh simply because there was never any resolution. They went from one emergency to the next tragedy, with Daryl disappearing for days to weeks at a time, and she was left to play pretend surrounded by the enemy. It frightened her, truly frightened her, that sometimes she felt more herself _here_ than she had since Rick left her behind on that supply run, telling her he didn't want her around his children anymore.

Nothing she told Negan was a lie, but it was only one version of the truth. That it was any version of the truth at all? That's what hurt.

She scraped at her eyes, making sure they stayed red, but not puffy. She could cry pretty when she needed to. Strange that, how she ended up married to two different men and both of whom seemed to get off on her crying. Different ways, of course: Ed preferred physical pain.

She shut off the water and exited the bathroom, expecting to put back on her discarded clothes and give Negan a kiss before following Dwight back to her room near the other wives. She'd lock herself in and have a real cry, indulge in self-pity for as long as it took to cleanse all these bad feelings out so that she could remember her people with love again. She'd work on her little sewing project, it calmed her to feel like she was doing _something_.

She didn't expect Negan to be sitting on the edge of the bed, waiting for her, looking pleased as hell with himself as he dragged her close to straddle his lap. "Change of plans, darlin', Dwight had to go take care of some preparations for tomorrow. You're going to stay with me tonight."

Nausea swept over her but rather than run naked and screaming out into the labyrinth of hallways and rooms she now called home, she kissed him soundly on the mouth, flexing her hips to grind against him as she threaded her fingers in his hair. He cupped her hip with one hand, forcing her back a little to allow him to slip the other hand between them and shove two fingers into her, getting himself worked up all over again.

She wiggled and squirmed and made the noises he liked to hear but she'd already closed herself off, locked away the parts that were still _her_ as she surrendered her body to him: a puppet made of flesh and heat and moisture. Bendable, posable, all hands and limbs and orifices, always taking his lead and going one step further. Eyes closed, mouth open, legs spread.

No, Daryl never made her come like that, and she prayed to God he never would. She doubted she'd ever see him again, _hoped_ she never saw him again, because she'd bought his freedom and all of their lives with this body and she couldn't stomach the thought of seeing them. They'd know. They'd look at her and know what she was doing with Negan - _to_ Negan - and what he was doing to her. It was her fucking choice and she made it, and she didn't regret it for a moment, but she also didn't need them to know the depths she would willingly go to if it was necessary. Let them think better of her.

Let them remember the Carol they knew - no more real than the sex doll Negan played with - and never know how willing her flesh was, how eagerly her body participated in its own degradation.

Let him never be touched by the filth inside her.

 **— The Sixth Day —**

This was terrible. Carol glared at Negan, unwilling to yell at him in front of his men, and he pointedly ignored her.

He'd had the wives "doll her up" that morning, and though she hadn't particularly liked what they'd done, she had to admit that it was a striking look for her. Once she was all done up, he loaded her in the Humvee to take a ride. She'd been counting the days, she knew they were still one day early for collecting at Alexandria, so she didn't even consider that a possibility until things began to look familiar and she realized they were going early. They were going early, and bringing her, and she looked...like this.

The convoy pulled up in front of the gates and announced their presence, demanding entrance. She prayed for mercy, prayed that Daryl at least would be gone, maybe out with Aaron or at least recovering at Hilltop from the bullet wound in his shoulder. She prayed that others would be gone too, hunting down supplies for the collection they expected tomorrow, that maybe the only ones left in Alexandria would be the Alexandrians, people that may not even recognize her in her current getup. They'd assimilated the idea of her as a frumpy housewife and wouldn't expect to see her in any other guise; they hadn't understood that it was her in the Wolf disguise, not really. They chose to believe what they thought they knew rather than the evidence before their faces. Maybe she'd be lucky.

She wasn't lucky. Not even a little.

The gates cranked open and there they were: Rick, Daryl, Rosita, Sasha, and Abraham, standing in a line, waiting. The Humvee pulled up and stopped, idling, the machine gun turret pointed straight at Rick as the bus and van behind them disgorged their retinue. Dwight stepped out first, grinning cheekily at Daryl and tilting the crossbow at him in greeting. Daryl ignored him. Negan stepped out, then reached back into the vehicle to grab a hold of her, lifting her out and setting her down, her back to them, the open door mostly hiding her from view. He gave her a look that demanded she play along, then allowed her to straighten out her clothes after the long car ride and his...appreciation. She smoothed her skirt, a skintight black pencil skirt that hit right above her knee, outlining every curve and hugging her ass. She was wearing Mary Janes with four inch heels, black with cherry red bows on the strap across the bridge of her foot, and wide weave black fishnet stockings with a seam up the back that she had to twist around to check their straightness. Her top was also black, also skin tight, with short sleeves, a stand-up collar, and a deeply cut sweetheart neckline that gave no coverage to her pushed-up and prominently displayed cleavage. The wives had told her she was the perfect body type for the "Rockabilly Pinup" look, and that's what they'd made her into: slicking back her hair and pinning a red silk rose above her right ear; rimming her eyes in black eyeliner with tilted-up cats-eye wings; darkening her brows into perfect arches; and painting her lips ruby red. Negan certainly appreciated the look.

He held out his arm for her to take, then strolled toward her family with her hanging off of him like a gangster and his moll. _I'm at sea again._

 **— — — —**

Not a one of them took a second glance at the woman. Except Daryl.

He'd know her anywhere, in any disguise. He knew the length of her legs in ragged cargo pants, sensible slacks, or this painted-on skirt that hobbled her from taking her normal-length stride. He knew the shape of her ass, been admiring it for years. He knew her feet would be aching in those shoes, but that she secretly loved the bows. She didn't like anyone to know that she loved girlie stuff, ruffles and bows and pretty dresses, but he knew.

He definitely knew the size and shape of her breasts, and that shirt and the fancy red bra peeking out from beneath it meant everyone else here did too. Bad enough when it was just that useless fuck Tobin, but Abe was lookin' and he was like a caricature of manliness. Daryl'll have to keep an eye on that one now.

Above all, he knew her face. He'd seen it smiling, laughing, clenched in pain, distant as she focused on a task. He knew what she looked like shaking with rage, scared out of her mind, sobbing with relief, pain, and grief, too often at the same time. He'd watched her sleep, more times than he could count - enough times to feel a bit creepy about it - so he knew her face at peace. Underneath the eye makeup that made the blue so much fucking bluer, and the red lips that made him ache with longing, he saw her and she was at peace.

Peace for Carol meant acceptance. Peace for Carol meant death, _her_ death. He didn't want her at peace, he wanted her at war.

The voices drowned on, Rick and Negan picking away at each other in an epic dick-measuring contest, until they were interrupted by an outburst from Rosita. "Holy fucking shit! Carol?" Her name came out as a high-pitched squeak, startling all of them even her. She hadn't been looking at any of her people, she hadn't looked anywhere but off into the distance with a thousand yard stare, but he knew damn well that she was aware that he'd been studying her. Rosita startled her enough that she looked at him, met his eye, and their gazes locked like two missile arrays targeting each other.

That was a mistake. Negan saw, and that was a mistake. He should have known not to look, to pretend he didn't recognize her like the others didn't recognize her because Negan saw what passed between them and Daryl knew what that meant. Like his father. Like Ed. Negan saw what he shouldn't have, and now someone would pay. Most likely her, but maybe him, maybe all of them. He knew what he had to do.

"Carol?" Rick said softly, hesitantly, looking at her like she would disappear in a puff of smoke if he blinked. The same look he gave her outside Terminus.

"You look like a whore," Daryl growled at her, letting his eyes drift down and back up her body with a sneer. "That what you are now? His whore?" Rosita gasped, shocked and furious, he could feel the others bristle around him like he just drop-kicked a puppy. "Didn't take long, did it?"

Negan slid one arm around her, more possessive than protective, and gave him his own once-over, just as contemptuous. "About as long as it took you to replace her with a fuckin' teenager," he said mildly, "at least she upgraded."

Daryl was genuinely shocked by that, didn't need to pretend to be hurt or angry at his words. That was an unexpected cut. She looked at him coldly, and a bit of doubt crept into him, chilling him. Negan's hand rested over her midsection, stroking her, his fingers idly brushing against the underside of her breasts and she leaned into him. "Keep a civil tongue in your head, boy, or I'll cut it out and feed it to you. You're talking to my wife."

 _His wife._

There was a time, back at the quarry, when he'd seen her sneak out of camp in the middle of the night and go down to the lake. He'd followed her then, wanting to protect her fool ass from the dangers out there even if he couldn't protect her from the dangers in her own bed. He watched her strip down to her underwear and pick her way over the rocks out into the water, and he was too mesmerized by all that pale skin and all those painful bruises and scars to pay much attention to what she was doing or he would have remembered the drop-off. All of a sudden she was gone, disappearing beneath the surface and the water churned in the place she'd just been. He started towards the water's edge to dive in after her when she broke the surface, gasping and flailing, dipping down again and again but always finding her way back up to take great gulps of air. She eventually figured it out on her own, how to use her arms and legs to stay afloat, how to move in the water, and he settled back to keep watch while she experimented with this new knowledge.

What bothered him then, and what bothered him now, was that not once did she make a sound. Not once did she cry for help even when she was drowning. Not once did she think that anyone was listening, or if they were, they'd reach out a hand to help her. All the times he'd saved her in those early days, not once was she expecting it. She didn't look to him or anyone for help, what fight she put up was her alone. And when the tables turned and she became the savior? That burden was hers to bear as well.

Back at the prison, Rick had rowed her out to the middle of the lake and kicked her out of the boat, but he was the one that left her out there to drown, knowing she'd figure out how to save herself on her own. But it wasn't the same as the first time, it wasn't just a swimming lesson in a quarry lake. He didn't go after her at the prison because he thought he had some kind of responsibility to all of them, couldn't be selfish and do what _he_ wanted. How many times had he failed her by denying himself?

He'd done wrong by her, he saw it all plainly, and now he was doubting what he thought he knew. Wondering what she really wanted. Of him, of them. She was drowning, but she wouldn't take his hand even if he offered it. She wouldn't look for it to be there, wouldn't trust it if it was. He might know her body, he might know her face, but he no longer knew _her_. He hadn't for a long time.

He cursed a blue streak, then spun on his heel and stalked away. Let them think what they wanted, he couldn't save her but he sure as hell didn't need to be there to make it worse.


	5. The Sixth Night

**— Author's Note —**

 _Firstly, and most important, I need to thank chemfemme for providing three drafts worth of beta-ing on this chapter. I approached her last week, concerned about having so many characters to juggle and wanting to be true to them, and she provided critical input and invaluable insight into the characters. That doesn't mean she had any say in what I wrote._

 _Secondly, and it is a close second, I need to thank the admins at Nine Lives, particularly Fairies Masquerade. While I was blissfully playing Dungeons & Dragons and then watching Supernatural on Netflix while eating ice cream, she was at the center of a shitstorm of internet bullying and abuse that used this story as a vehicle to attack both Nine Lives, and FM personally. I don't know the details of what all was said, because the admins not only protected me from the abuse, they had my back and defended this story against accusations such as writing about rape makes me the same as a rapist._

 _To the person or persons who thought using me and my story to bully, threaten, and attack someone was a good idea, I've really got a whole metric fuck-ton of things to say to you, so how about you get in touch with me?_

 **— — — —**

 **— The Sixth Night —**

"I can't believe y'all are even discussing this!" Sasha exploded, pounding one fist down on the dining room table and interrupting the planning session for Carol's rescue. "Of all of us, that woman can take care of herself. Hell, I actually feel a little sorry for Negan's people. You all saw her too," she looked around, meeting the eyes of some while others looked away. "Bitch landed on her feet once again."

Daryl growled, launching from his chair. Abe shot forward to catch hold of him and Daryl tossed him a disgusted scowl over his shoulder as he started pacing. Like he'd hit a woman. The fuckhead didn't know him if he thought that. Sasha was out of line, but he wouldn't _hit_ her over it.

Abe was getting on his last nerve. He'd stuck close, too close. Kept his promise to Carol...over-zealously. Abe was like a gnat, always flitting around him, nearly impossible to escape and even harder to drive away. Daryl's first impulse was to go after her, even injured and near dead from blood loss, and Abe had been the one to hold him down while the doctor at Hilltop stitched him up. And it was bad enough watching Negan drive away with her the first time, when he thought she was Negan's hostage, but now? Knowing she was a _wife_? That vein of barely-suppressed violence that was the Dixon birthright pulsed in time to the pounding in his head, just waiting to burst.

"Sasha, we all know your feelings but you can't really still blame Carol for what happened to Tyreese. From all accounts, she saved him too–" Rick deputy voice was kicking in: half stern, half cajoling, willing her to see reason. She sat back in her chair, astounded, realization breaking over her.

"Y'all don't know, do you? You don't know what she did to Lizzie."

The room was silent, every eye on her. Even Daryl had settled into an eerie calm, frozen in place near the doorway.

"I thought y'all knew and were just doing...whatever to keep her from losing her shit." She glanced at Daryl.

He spoke even less these days than he had been, and his voice was like metal scraping against gravel. "Walkers got the girls," he muttered dismissively. "They died. Carol kept them from turning." Before he'd even gotten half way through, Sasha was already violently shaking her head.

"No, that's not what happened. Tyreese told me, same time he told me he forgave her for Karen. He swore me to secrecy, said she needed time to _grieve_ ," she spat out the last few words, the bitterness from her brother's death still fresh. "Lizzie was crazy, thought walkers were just sick or some shit, treated them like playmates. She killed Mika, stabbed her, so she'd turn and Carol would see they were good. To prove something to Carol. She was about to do Judith too when Ty and her found them." All the color had drained from Rick's face, and he sat back, hard, in his chair, pushing back from the table. Daryl was stone-faced but pale, the flesh around his eyes seeming to darken and sink in, and he resumed pacing around the room like a whirlwind.

"She considered them her daughters," Michonne said quietly. "That's all she'd ever say about them."

Sasha's face was twisted up into a snarl. "That's what she does, she turns people into monsters who'll do anything for her. Lizzie killed Mika for her approval, Ty died thinking he owed her, even after Karen." She glared at Rick, not forgetting that he tried to sell them all to Negan to protect Carol. "She can take care of herself."

"Wh-what happened to Lizzie?" Rick asked,

"She took her for a walk and shot her in the head when Lizzie's back was turned. They buried the girls then headed toward Terminus. Found us the next day." She shook her head, looking down at her hands.

" _Saved_ us the next day," Michonne reminded. Rick made a sound next to her, hunched over and clutching his gut with a wild, blank look on his face. Spencer and Tobin glanced at each other. _Saved us?_ Aaron nodded at them, he knew the story.

Daryl was strung so tight he was ready to snap, pacing back and forth, back and forth, fists and jaw clenched. Michonne was as still as a statue while Rick rocked in his chair. The others, those that hadn't known her as long, or hadn't really known her at all, looked confused.

"It's tragic, I'll give you that," said Jesus into the silent void that Michonne's words had created, "but we've all had to do things we regret. We've all lost people."

Michonne looked around, noting the looks flashing between Spencer, Jesus...Tobin. She shook her head. "Her husband died early on. Walkers–"

Daryl interrupted with a snarl. "Fucker beat her. He woulda been–"

"Then lost her daughter soon after," Michonne continued calmly, interrupting Daryl who glared and continued pacing, "I didn't know her then, not until the prison, but I've heard that everyone thought she'd break, just give up. But she didn't. Not ever. By the time I knew her, she ran the place, practically single-handed, keeping everyone fed, warm, clothed. Lost her own daughter but still took care of all the kids, even taught them," she ducked her head, hiding her smile, "...called it story-time."

"Then she just decided on her own to kill some sick people." Sasha crossed her arms and glared at Michonne.

"And I handled it," Rick said, his voice hoarse and his eyes wild and focused on Sasha. "I took her away from there for Tyrese. I _handled_ it."

Daryl scoffed at that, it wasn't for Ty. "You _banished_ her. You left her to die and you had NO FUCKIN' RIGHT," Daryl shouted at him, rocking forward and jabbing one finger in Rick's direction. "She was out there _alone_." Rick flinched. Aaron got up from his chair and stood with Daryl, setting a hand lightly on his shoulder.

Michonne narrowed her eyes, considering Aaron, and glanced over at Rick. He looked pale and sweaty, but stubbornly determined, and it was one of those moments where she felt his righteousnessr was misplaced. "She'd been left out there alone to die," she said, shaking her head at Rick. "But she still risked everything at Terminus to save us. Then at Grady. Then again with the Wolves."

Rick sighed, turning to look out the window. It was getting dark and the view of the neighborhood was overlaid with the image of the room behind him. "Out on the road," he said, clearing his throat, "she made sure all of us ate. I saw her, over and over, give up her portion to Lori or Carl, pretend she was eating from an empty bowl. She never had a thick blanket or a warm coat, she never had a full meal if someone else needed it more. And I let her,' he said bitterly, nodding at Michonne, "because Lori and Carl needed the food, and because it seemed to make her happy. The only one who ever looked out for her was Daryl." He looked at the man, giving him a nod, acknowledging his failure as a friend, a brother, a fellow human being. Acknowledging his willingness to let her give and keep giving, satisfied to take because she offered. "I justified it. _I_ needed my share because I had to be strong. _Lori_ was pregnant. Carl was so young. Everyone else needed it more. I thought I was allowing it for the good of the group."

Daryl looked disgusted, locking eyes with Rick. They might as well have been alone in that room. "You _used_ her. You _knew_ what Ed did to her, how worthless she felt, and you _used_ that to take care of your own. You give just enough," he said, his voice cold and dark and bitter, "to make her feel needed and obliged, to make her _responsible_ for everyone else's needs until she's willing to turn her back on her own to satisfy you." Aaron wondered if Rick realized who Daryl was talking about, the man could be so smugly sanctimonious that it blinded him. Daryl stepped forward, one finger still pointed in Rick's face, and Rick flinched away. "She ain't Carl's mom, Rick, and she sure as fuck ain't yours. She's got no obligation to _any_ of us, and that means we owe her."

"What she did to the Saviors at the slaughter house," Rosita spoke so low it was barely above a whisper, "Maggie told me she turned them on each other, and Carol saved her over and over by letting them tear her apart. And she did the killing, all but one, so Maggie didn't have to." Rosita had tears in her eyes when she looked up at Daryl. "Maggie went to her afterwards and Carol comforted her but didn't want anything back. She didn't want anyone to know what she did, and she wouldn't talk to Maggie about it." Daryl made an animal sound in his throat. He _knew_ something happened — why didn't he force her to talk about it like she did?

"I can't believe this. All of you knew these things and didn't do anything?" Spencer said, looking around with shock and disgust. "I thought you said you were friends? Family even. Daryl, aren't you two together?"

Daryl fell back against the wall in the corner, arms wrapped around himself, head down. "I asked her what they did to her at the slaughter house. She said _they_ didn't to anything to her, it was what _she_ did to them."

Rosita hesitated, then her voice steadied as Daryl met and held her eyes. "Carol... doesn't talk about things. She'll let anyone who needs to cry on her shoulder, meanwhile making cookies and infiltrating the neighborhood association like a damn secret agent," one side of her mouth quirked up and his did the same. She glanced at Spencer, shaking her head. "The woman has balls of steel." Abe shot Rosita a _stop fucking talking!_ look and she glared back at him. "Like it fucking matters anymore. The game has changed, Abe, and they should know what a bad ass she is." She focused on Spencer and Tobin, who were looking at each other in confusion before they looked up at Aaron. He shrugged. He already knew, Daryl had confessed everything on their first recruitment trip and he was in full agreement with them. "Her casseroles and cardigans were a ruse. Y'all saw what you wanted to see, and never suspected the little housewife was raiding your fucking armory and equipping all of us. Yeah. You heard me." Rosita glared at them defiantly, daring them — especially Spencer — to contradict her, Jesus watching it all with growing curiosity and interest. "You only see women based on _your_ expectations, and then you dismiss them, because you've been living in this little bubble and you have NO. FUCKING. IDEA. what the world is really like now. CAROL was made for this world. DARYL was made for this world," she said, gesturing at the man who was as wide-eyed and slack-jawed as everyone else in the room, but her eyes were locked on Spencer. "You? You're just walker bait."

Jesus started laughing, a deep, rich, rumbling laugh that grew in volume as he threw back his head. He shook himself like a dog shrugging off rain, looking around at every person in the room, really _looking_ at them. "Who _are_ you people?" He asked, admiringly. "And where can we find more?"

Sasha slowly shook her head, looking at each of her companions with angry disappointment. "She's not even here and she's got you all testifyin' to her greatness. Like she's the only one who lost people, who sacrificed." Her lip curled up in disdain. "She's the most dangerous person I've ever met. She doesn't need rescuing."

Daryl sat back down at the table and spoke directly to Rick as if Sasha wasn't even there. "She carried us — _all_ of us — even when she was tired, cold, and starving. And we let her. After the farm, in the prison, on the road here... even behind these walls, we let her down. We _let_ her sacrifice." No one said anything, there was nothing to be said.

Morgan finally interrupted the silence, his face inscrutable. "Carol doesn't do anything for herself. She told me she left here because she didn't want to kill any longer, thought that made her a liability to us all," he said, looking around before meeting Daryl's eye. "I could see she was falling apart, it was eating away at her, because she couldn't keep protecting us and we didn't even know she was doing it." He turned toward Spencer and Tobin. "What she did, when the Wolves attacked? How many of you realized that was her? Every day she's been here, she's been in disguise. Every day." He met Jesus's eye. "Hilltop wants to ally with us because we can fight? Our best warrior is behind enemy lines."

Tobin got up from the table abruptly and left the room.

Rick's voice was hollow with pain. Doubt flickered over his features, the familiar sight of him waffling on a hard decision was filling Daryl with a dark, corrosive rage. He knew what was coming next. "She went with Negan to save us and she won't try to leave on her own. Maybe Sasha's right though, maybe she don't even want us to go after her. She's safe there."

Daryl saw the doubt start to spread like a virus; that's how it always started, that's how they always fractured when they needed to be together. He slammed his fist down on the table, hard enough that it creaked and shuddered. "Fuckin' CHRIST, Rick! Are you even listenin' to yourself? This is CAROL. Do you think she wants to be any man's wife, let alone that psycho's? Are you fuckin' kidding me?!"

Rick couldn't meet his eye but he had the decency to look ashamed. He nodded, slowly, giving up his doubts. Fuckin' _finally_. "Yeah...you're right. That's not what Carol would choose," he said with tired resignation. It may be unfair of him but it crossed Daryl's mind that maybe that was something _Rick_ would choose, if he thought it was a guarantee for his kids. Not for the first time, Daryl wondered what Carl might have to say about one of his old man's decisions.

Morgan nodded. "When I found her outside that library, she wanted me to leave her to die. Giving herself to Negan? She'll see that as the last, best sacrifice she has to make to keep us safe."

Aaron stepped around Daryl and up to the table, placing his hands on the surface and resting his weight on them. He looked at Morgan, then Michonne, then finally let his gaze rest on Rick. "She's done enough, for all of us. She's protected us enough, saved us enough. We need to try to save her now. We all owe her, and she needs to know that we cared enough to try, even if it fails."

"He's right," Michonne said in her deadly soft voice. "She's done enough. All by herself. Kept us all going, saved us. Gave up everything. Did what she had to and lived with it, still protecting us. It's time we settled that debt." She looked up at Daryl, meeting his eyes, and he gave her a single nod in gratitude.

The discussion was over after that, the decision made. Sasha shook her head in disgust and got up from the table, stalking out of the house and down the street. Other people trickled out slowly, done with the day and looking for bed. A small group would go to Hilltop first, see what support could be had and to let Glenn and Maggie know the situation at hand, then onward to a new place Jesus called "The Kingdom" where more opposition to Negan might be found. Rick, Michonne, Daryl, Rosita, Aaron, and Jesus would be leaving at dawn.

 **— Same Night, Outside Sanctuary —**

The caravan, loaded down with the fruits of ASZ's labor, snaked through the maze of abandoned cars, stacks of tires, rubble, and broken walls that made up the immediate area surrounding Sanctuary. It was an effective blockade for the dead and the living, giving plenty of opportunities for the guards on the walls to take out the unwelcome as they wove their way through the detritus of civilization. The Humvee's radio squawked loudly as they had hit the outer edge of the maze, checking for the right word or phrase to give them safe passage. Negan was still, brooding in the back seat and staring moodily out the window while Carol sat close to his right side, one arm tucked under his and her ankles crossed, navigating her own minefield with the tactics and skills she learned from 15 years of living in a war zone. She schooled her features to present whatever facade would keep him satisfied: at this moment it was placid concern.

His right hand rested on her left knee, gripping tight enough to leave bruises, but she made no indication that she felt anything. She tentatively grasped his hand, giving a gentle squeeze before letting her thumb idly stroke across his knuckles. "You okay, baby? You seem tense."

He grimaced, turning to look at her with a chagrined expression then focusing on their hands. "I'm alright. Just havin' a fuckin' pensive moment, you know? Ponderin' the state of the world and all that. Road less fuckin' traveled."

Carol was confused to find herself genuinely curious as to what he was thinking. It was...unexpected. They'd sat in silence for almost three hours as the convoy navigated the relatively short trip between ASZ and Sanctuary proper, a trip that would have taken a fraction of the time in the days when cars on highways actually moved and didn't just molder from the elements, housing vermin and the hungry dead. Now, in the last minutes of their journey, she found herself wanting conversation. "Like what?"

He glanced over, meeting her eyes and holding them for a handful of heartbeats, assessing her before finally shrugging and slouching back in his seat. "Nothing terribly fucking profound, just the kind of thing you'd expect from your average megalomaniacal tyrant in a post-apocalyptic hellscape." He glanced over again and snorted at her dumbfounded expression.

"You been reading my diary again, baby?" She asked without thinking, then her hand shot up to cover her mouth. Her stomach clenched, dread choking her. Acid flooded her throat and she felt light-headed. She hadn't spoken this spontaneously in the last 15 years, and certainly not to a man that held her life in his hands.

One heartbeat. A flutter of regret. Two heartbeats. Nausea twisted her gut. Three heartbeats. He turned, his full body canting towards her and she flinched back. Four heartbeats... He began to chuckle, then it transformed into full-blown laughter, genuine hilarity, his eyes wide then clenching shut as he released her knee to wrap his arms around his belly, his head tilting back and he gasped for breath. It went on for forever, a lifetime, _her_ lifetime, and she gradually calmed herself as the convoy approached the front gates, Dwight turning back to stare curiously at his boss, then her, then his boss again as Wesley, the driver, peered at them in the rearview mirror.

Still gasping out the occasional chuckle, his face flushed and slicked from his watering eyes, he leaned toward her and caught her face between his large, strong hands before planting a soft kiss on her mouth. "Oh, darlin', I'm so glad no one else heard that," he murmured to her, his smiling face just inches from her own. "I'd hate to have to pluck out one of your beautiful blue eyes."

Apparently she _was_ fool enough to insult the man, but she wasn't fool enough to think he wouldn't. "Negan," she whispered, not cringing from him but close enough to it that she felt sick. "I wouldn't do that, I wouldn't disrespect you in front of your men. I don't know what possessed me to say it at all..."

He sat back, his smirk fading and he eyed her with a wrinkled brow and tense mouth, stone-faced but not angry. Instead, there was something like curiosity in his gaze, puzzlement, as if he was still trying to figure something out. "I'm gonna ask you a few questions, and I want real fuckin' answers to them, not what you think I want to hear." She nodded, anticipating where this was going. He saw what passed between her and Daryl, he couldn't have possibly missed it. She was so convinced of what his question would be that she was totally unprepared. "Why were you out on that highway that morning, when you took out those fuckwits in my patrol?"

"I...uh. I—-" she was trying so hard to come up with a plausible reason, something she could use to her advantage, but she couldn't think past the same three words that circled in her brain trying to beat their way out. There was no use in fighting it. "I was leaving," she said, staring at him dumbly. "I was leaving."

He nodded, as if that was what he expected. "You didn't look at any of them fuckers, the whole time we were there. Only Dixon, and only the once. Right up until that hot little tamale said your name, none of them even fuckin' recognized you. Except him. Why is that?"

"Why did he, or why didn't they? I'm sorry, I don't know what you're asking."

He made a dismissive sound in his throat, cocking a sardonic grin at her. "I know why he knew you, that was fuckin' obvious. Man's probably dressed you up and stripped you down in his brain a thousand times. He'll be spankin' it to that outfit for a month, I'm sure." She flushed, staring out the window. He trailed his hand up her right thigh, leaving it to rest there, his arm across her torso keeping her locked in place. "What I want to fuckin' know is what about the rest of them."

The corners of her mouth turned down and she shook her head, looking at him in confusion. "I have no idea."

He sighed. "Why were you leavin'?"

She felt her chest begin to tighten up, like a cosmic fist was gripping her, slowly squeezing the breath from her lungs. Her field of vision began to narrow, the edges becoming fuzzy, and all the oxygen seemed to have been sucked out of the vehicle because no matter how she tried, she couldn't get air into her lungs. Her one hand was gripping the edge of the seat, the other was pushing against his arm, trying frantically to release the awful pressure against her chest but even when he moved it away she couldn't seem to take a full breath and her heart was racing. The flock of birds living inside her beginning to flap their wings and fight their way out of her chest cavity. Her head was thrust downward and held between her knees, and gradually she began to calm down again. The birds settled back into their broody nests, heads tucked under wings, waiting patiently for their time.

After awhile he let her sit back up again, but he didn't release his grasp on the back of her neck. His fingers held her securely in an iron grip but it wasn't painful, rather it was steadying. She realized the vehicle was stopped inside the gates to Sanctuary, and he motioned to his men to get out and leave them. "Let's try that again. Why were you leavin'?"

She took a few long, deep breaths, closing her eyes and focusing on the song on repeat in her head.

 _All at sea again_

 _and now my hurricanes_

 _have brought down this ocean rain_

 _to bathe me again..._

It calmed her, thoughts of being on one of those tall ships, three masted, hanging onto the guardrail as the storm and sea raged around her. There was peace in that kind of death — it wasn't surrender, there was nothing to fight against when you were just a tiny piece of flotsam tossed around on the vast nothing of endless water. You were, and then you weren't. No one would ever know what happened because anyone that could tell your tale would be right there with you, sinking below into the cold depths. She wouldn't have to keep fighting, keep struggling to stay afloat, she could just let go.

It gave her comfort, and that gave her perspective. It didn't matter anymore, what she told him or didn't. What she thought, what she knew, what she believed. None of it mattered, not really. Why was she hiding? What could it possibly benefit her to keep anything from him?

What kind of relief would it be to have someone finally _know_ her?

"I've lied to you," she said, taking a deep breath and letting it out. "Quite a bit. And I don't even know why except it's all I know anymore. It's how I survive." She looked him in the eye and let the mask slip. She let him see her. "I've done terrible things, I've killed so many people, children even, and I can live with what I've done. I made my choices. Your people out on the road, I can live with that. I told them to leave me alone, to turn around and leave. I gave them every opportunity and every warning, and they went for their weapons. But I can't...choose to kill anymore. Not to protect the people I love, not even to protect myself. I can't stand behind a little girl in a field and put a bullet in her skull while she picks wildflowers, even for the greater good."

He stared straight ahead, not seeing anything, his mind a thousand miles away. "It's the world we fuckin' live in now," he said finally. Not pleased, not satisfied, not angry, just...calm. Contemplative. As if he'd been where she was and had gone farther down the road, and now he was looking back to her and waving her forward. "There's no other way. There's no government, no police, no fuckin' military. Someone has to step up and maintain order, someone has to enforce the goddamn rules. Without an economy, the only avenue to keep fuckers in line is threatening their lives, and it can't be a bluff." Negan's hand squeezed her neck gently, even — and this was hard to believe but it was what she _felt_ from him at that moment — even sympathetically. But his expression remained neutral. "You warned the fuckwits, you told them what would happen if they broke your rules, and you carried out your threat when they did it anyway. I respect that." He shrugged. "It's the same fucking thing I did to your people, 'cept I didn't kill any of them."

Knuckles rapped against the window and Negan stretched out his arm to pop open the door. "Boss, brought you a present. She was hidin' in one of the trucks."

Carol looked on in horror as the man pushed Enid forward towards the open door of the Humvee. "No no no no no no no," she said, lunging from her seat toward the girl. "Enid, NO!"

The girl looked at her, wrinkling her brow, then shaking her head. "You got it wrong, Carol. I'm not Enid. I'm Negan."

"Angel!" Negan shouted, jumping down to grab Enid up in a bear hug, looking pleased as fuck to see her.


	6. Seven Days

**— Seven Days, Hilltop —**

"I heard what Negan said to you. Rosita told me."

 _Of course she did._ He'd expected this ever since the Saviors had dropped in to visit, that word would get to Farmer's Daughter and Short Round about what Negan said. He maybe hoped that the confrontation wouldn't be within an hour of arriving in Hilltop— he hadn't even seen them yet because he'd been with Aaron talking to people Jesus trusted — but that's how things went. One fucking thing after another, no relief, no moment to stop and think. He lit up a cigarette and pushed back his hair, squinting a bit as he watched Hilltop folk go about their business. He was sitting on the steps of the main house's porch, and she and Glenn stood at the top looking down on him. "Figured."

"He was talking about Beth, wasn't he?" _Shit she was angry._ He'd held out a small amount of hope that she wouldn't be quite so raw about it, maybe just want to clear the air. _No fuckin' luck. Not ever._

"Yeah." He kept smoking, looking out into the distance, waiting for her to strike him, scream at him...assume the worst and want to punish him.

"Did you fuck my sister?" Her voice was deadly quiet, pure killing rage, and normally he might try to defuse the situation but now _he_ was fuckin' _pissed_.

" _No!_ " he exploded, "What the FUCK!" He finally looked at her, both of them seething, and he saw Glenn was holding on to her arm but he just looked sad, not judging him. It calmed him down instantly. "It ain't like that, Maggie. You know both of us better'n that."

She crumpled right in front of him, all the rage draining out because she did, she did know both of them better than to think either one of them would do that. Her knees buckled and she sat down hard on the steps next to him, hands shaking as she reached over and plucked the cigarette out of his hand then crushed it against the steps. "Not around the baby," she said and he snorted, shaking his head. Glenn sat down on her other side, holding her hand.

"What happened out there? I never even asked. I couldn't even...think for so long."

"Not a whole lot," he said, sitting forward, his arms between his knees and his hands locked together as he stared out at nothing. "Everything."

"Daryl." He glanced over at her sideways, seeing that same exasperated, determined, _affectionate_ expression she got when Glenn was being particularly stupid. He sighed, facing forward again. Some things were easier to say if you weren't looking right at someone.

"I'm guessin' your dad told you about me, what he seen, what he guessed. The scars." He had truly extraordinary peripheral vision, and he saw her nod out of the corner of his eye and even the sheepish expression on Glenn's face. He didn't figure much was secret around here. "And you met my brother. So you know I had a shitty fucking childhood." They both nodded again, neither one fans of Merle but he'd let that go. "I was stuck in that house until I was 18, then I was out on my own workin' to keep myself alive. Merle didn't show back up for a few years, and once he was back it wasn't any fuckin' easier. He was an addict, and he contributed fuck-all to household expenses." He was rambling but he didn't care. He didn't care that he was sharing personal, private things with these people, things he'd only ever told one other person, because not talking to each other is how they all fucked up in the first place. Not talking, not _making_ each other talk, that's how Carol slipped through the cracks and disappeared into her own pain. That's how he failed her. It was time to stop shutting everyone else out.

For their part, Glenn and Maggie sat there with their mouths hanging open, listening to more words coming out of Daryl at one time than he'd said to either of them in the last year. It was... unprecedented. It was like someone else had possessed their friend, someone positively _chatty_ , and they glanced at each other, eyebrows raised. Maybe this was the man that only Carol knew before now.

"Your sister.. . _Beth_ ," it was still so hard to say her name, the guilt he felt at failing her caused it stick in his throat. "You know what she was like. She was...innocent. Gentle. Sweet. She was still such a kid." He paused, remembering what it was like, when they realized they were alone. "We couldn't find anyone, we thought y'all were dead, and I'd already lost..." He _really_ couldn't say _her_ name, not right now. "She wouldn't let me give up out there, you know? And your sister was just bein' herself, but for a very short time I thought maybe I could be like that. Maybe, for just a day or two, I could be a _kid_ for once and just stop feeling so _bad_ all the time. It didn't help though, just made things worse. I let my guard down, and those fucks took her."

He turned to face Maggie, face up to his responsibility in her sister's death. "I was selfish, and I wasn't thinkin' straight. Beth was a kid but I'm a fuckin' adult and I should've been actin' like one. Instead, I was reckless, and I encouraged her, and at Grady at the end, she did somethin' stupid and reckless too and it got her killed. And that's my fault because I should have been teachin' her by example, not following her lead. I made her think it was okay to take chances with her life, and I'll never forgive myself for gettin' her killed." He blinked repeatedly, opened his eyes wide, tried looking up...all the tactics he learned as a kid to stop his eyes from leaking. Seeing Maggie's grief bloom all over again, admitting what he did, it was too much. Tears coursed down his weathered cheeks as he felt it all again. And Beth deserved his grief, she deserved to have them mourn her.

Maggie turned her whole body to face him, reaching out a tentative hand and letting it rest on his. "Daryl," she said, with a softness in her voice he'd never heard before. "It wasn't your fault. Even if you had done everythin' right, you had one, maybe two days with her and you wouldn't have been able to fix the years of coddlin' and shelterin' that made her what she was. She was so _young_ for her age, so naive, because of our daddy and Annette treating her like a fragile flower her entire life. She was getting stronger, more capable, but nothin' you coulda done in two days woulda kept her from making stupid, reckless decisions without thinkin' through the consequences. That's on _us_ , not you. That was always on us and daddy even told me that he failed Beth by tryin' to let her stay a kid when she needed to grow the fuck up." At Daryl's snort she looked sheepish. "Yeah, daddy didn't phrase it quite that way, but that's what he meant."

He put his free hand over hers and squeezed it. All the bad feelings over Beth weren't gone, not completely, but it wasn't all on him anymore. He wasn't solely responsible for what happened to her, what she'd done, even knowing he could have done better. Maybe now he could remember all the good about her and not just the bad. Maybe he could stop being so angry at her _and_ himself. Maggie and Glenn both looked like some great weight had been lifted from them, like being able to talk about her realistically, flaws _and_ virtues, soothed some of the bitter bite of grief.

They sat there, together, for the longest time, Maggie's hand sandwiched between his own as Glenn leaned against her back, all of them lost in their own thoughts. Finally he felt her lightly squeeze his hand and he thought that meant she wanted him to release her, but she just hung on tighter as he looked at her with a raised eyebrow.

"So what was Negan talkin' about?" She asked quietly. "What exactly was said out there? I heard Negan knew that you'd had sex with Beth, and you called Carol a _whore_? — which I don't hardly believe — and he flung Beth in your face to defend her?"

His shoulders slumped. It was all so ugly and pointless and hurtful, but she deserved to understand how her sister's memory was being used. "I'm gonna just say sorry now because Beth didn't do anything to deserve this, and this is my fault for not telling Carol exactly what I just told you." He could see them look at each other out of the corner of his eye. "Yeah, I'm not any better at talkin' to her than anyone else around here, she just never seemed to need me to. And now I'm realizin' that she never asked but that didn't mean she didn't need it. She never asked for anything, you know? So I thought she just understood.

"Negan saw us starin' at each other," he continued, "and I knew that wasn't good for her or us. I tried to cover it up by callin' her names, acting like I was judgin' her for what she had to do...goddammit, what she's _doin'_ — for us. I called her his whore, and he threw it back at me sayin' I'd already replaced her with a teenager, with Beth. I can't think of any happy, smiley reason why she would've told him that. For the life of me, I can't think of any reason at all."

"Can't you?" Glenn said gently, looking at him like he was a slow child. "When the Saviors ambushed us and Negan decided to take Carol away, it was like watching the end of The Titanic, if those characters were doing a Romeo and Juliet-style suicide pact. It was fucking tragic, a heart-breaking spectacle, man. You have no idea...how can you not see this?" Daryl continued to stare at him blankly, trying to think back over that night but not coming up with anything like what Glenn was describing. "The two of you...Jesus... It used to be funny, watching the two of you be so oblivious. We all thought, after Terminus, you were finally getting somewhere but then it seemed like you had a falling-out because it changed, _you_ two changed, and no one knew what to do about it. But that night? That was epic. And Negan's not the type to share his toys." Maggie was nodding along with everything Glenn was saying, and Daryl wanted to just dismiss it like he did everything that made him uncomfortable, but that's how they ended up having this conversation.

He had to fight his instincts for self-preservation, for assuming the worst — or feeling nothing at all — so that nothing and no one could make him be that little kid again, unloved and not understanding why. Always wondering what he'd done to make them hurt him so bad. "So you think she told him that because it would convince him that we weren't together?" He released Maggie's hand to chew on his thumbnail, ripping at the ragged cuticle. He hadn't ever though about what it looked like from the outside, him and Carol, or what others would think they understood about them.

"No, man, I think she told him that because it hurt _her_ , and _that_ convinced him that you weren't together." Glenn looked at him sadly as he winced, sucking in air painfully. They lapsed into silence again, Maggie and Glenn watching him deal with what now seemed so obvious.

He needed some time, alone in the woods, to work through all these new ideas but they were in fucking Hilltop and he was trapped here. He needed to _move_ , he needed air, sitting still like this was suffocating him. He stood up to leave but paused for a second, saying over his shoulder, "Carol once said to me that the reason we're such good friends is because we both understand that you can still love people who do horrible things to you. That lovin' them don't mean we ask for it or want it. She said other people don't get that, they judge us for stickin' around, for not hatin' those who hurt us the worst. She's hurtin' but I'm gonna get her away from him, and she and me are gonna be fine. What we got? This don't change anything."

Watching him walk away, it was the most hope Glenn and Maggie had felt in weeks.

After a long silence, Maggie nudged Glenn's knee. "Beth deserved to have a full life, ya know? She deserved to be loved, not teenage puppy love but like what you an' me got. There's a tiny part of me almost wishes Beth and him _had_ done somethin', he woulda been good to her."

Glenn watched the man in question as he stood with Jesus and Aaron, talking intently, occasionally gesturing towards the walls, the FEMA trailers, the main house, while Jesus nodded thoughtfully. He shook his head at Maggie with a sad smile. "I know, but it wasn't ever going to be him. He'd never.. . She'd never be the one he _really_ wanted, and he's not the type to settle." Maggie winced, but nodded.

 **— Seven Days, Sanctuary —**

The wives' rooms weren't too far from Negan's private rooms, just one hallway and three turns away. They looked out over the back of the building onto a maze of HVAC equipment on the roof of the lower part, then a set of outbuildings between them and the wall, and from the window of Carol's room, she'd be able to see the No Man's Land of scorched earth and the forest beyond. She sat at that window for hours at a time, whenever she wasn't required to be with Negan, staring at her hands and the thousands of stitches building up on the fabric caught up in her embroidery hoop. It was the most idle she'd been since she'd first got married, so many years ago. Since before Sophia was born.

She didn't like having so much free time, so much time to do nothing but think. She sat in the window, needle poking in and out of the pillowcase she was applying tiny stitches to, the soft gloss of the embroidery thread forming a picture beneath her agile fingers almost despite herself. She'd been here seven days, and this was the third pillowcase she'd decorated with her delicate, precise needlework. Her insomnia had no other outlet, and whether the window showed a view or just her own reflection, it didn't much matter. She didn't look out.

Seven days.

A whole week. Granted almost half of that time was spent unconscious in the infirmary, and the sharp, shooting pain of the nerves healing on her side reminded her on a regular basis of that time, but it still felt like forever. It reminded her, in a way, of the days just after that barn door had opened up and—– Those days had been so empty, so meaningless. Only thing that had kept her from losing her mind was Daryl and he—–

She had too much time to think.

She cringed but she almost welcomed it when Negan summoned her to him, when the blonde man with the bow would knock on her door, waiting patiently for her to decide to open it, then lead her wordlessly to wherever his boss waited. Usually his room, but sometimes it was other places, where she'd stand to the side and watch Negan conduct his business or lay down his law, and then he'd turn to her with that big grin of his and say "Carol, glad you could join me." And he meant it, she could tell. He was genuinely glad to see her. And she'd smile back at him, and let the smile reach her eyes, and if he seemed like he was in the mood for it, she'd move towards him past the blonde man and give him a soft kiss on the cheek. Never on the lips, not in public, but he'd accept a kiss on the cheek because he could pretend it didn't matter at all to him and he could keep talking or staring someone down while she pressed against him and let her lips linger against the warm skin just above his wiry whiskers. He might wrap an arm idly about her waist, hold her against his side while she rested her cheek on his shoulder and looked out at whomever was standing before him, or she might move back to the wall next to the blonde man and stare at Negan while seeing nothing but her own jagged thoughts like broken glass grinding behind her eyes.

The other wives stayed away from her, and she was glad for it.

The wives, they were uniformly young and beautiful, each in a different way, and dressed provocatively. Each in a different way. One of them — Sherry? Cheryl? — had light brown hair, and wore lacy things that hugged her slim hips and left her long-as-fuck legs bare. There was also a blonde, curvy, who seemed to favor tight leather that zippered up or down strategically, and three others, but she didn't know their names and they hadn't been much involved with playing dress-up for her trip to Alexandria.

They mostly stayed away from her, and she was glad of it, but now she was being summoned to the wives' lounge. The blonde man told her to dress accordingly and she didn't know what that meant so she wore her cleanest cargo pants, a plain black tank, and a man's burgundy dress shirt, sleeves rolled up and the shirttail hanging loose to cover the empty sheath on her belt. She'd added tucks to the shirt so it was more fitted to her frame, no loose fabric for grasping dead hands to catch hold of. When she opened the door again to her escort, bare minutes after he'd given her the order, he looked at her funny then gave a shake of his head, looking away with a tight, bitter smile.

"No, I guess you wouldn't have to dress to stand out," he said under his breath, gesturing for her to precede him. She ignored him, looked pointedly at the crossbow he carried, and then stalked past him and down the hall.

She was early, that much was plain, because the room was empty except for her, her escort, and Enid.

Enid jumped up from the couch she'd been sprawled out on, flipping through an ancient celebrity fashion magazine that proclaimed shoulders were in for the summer, and some starlet with doe eyes had the best they'd seen. Just like the first time she'd seen it, she thought of another doe-eyed girl with skinny little shoulders that were so precious to her, and what they looked like with a chunk of flesh ripped off of them by dead teeth. She was still lost in memories when Enid's arms were squeezing her uncomfortably tight and the girl whispered something but she didn't catch it. Carol gently extracted herself from the embrace and shook her head at the girl. She wanted to shove her away, but she didn't.

They sat down on the couch together, Enid shooting the blonde man a dirty look when he gestured them farther apart, and the girl took Carol's hand instead, squeezing it.

"Not sure if you heard, but Maggie and the baby are fine," she said in a hushed tone that didn't carry beyond the two of them. "Don't tell Negan about her or Judith, he's baby crazy." Carol stared at her blankly. "Oh, get off it, Dwight," she snarled at the man who was demanding the two of them separate and stop conspiring. "I'm tellin' her about her people."

"We're her people now," Dwight said dangerously, stepping away from the door and toward them. "Quit playin' your games, Enid."

"Get back to your post," she sneered, "you know you aren't allowed any farther into this room."

"I don't give a fuck who you are, I will fuckin' whip your ass like a toddler if you don't follow the goddamn RULES!"

Carol hadn't been listening to them bicker, not at all, she'd been staring at that magazine cover and singing in her head, but when the man started shouting she flinched. Enid's hand squeezed her's tighter, painfully so, and Carol looked up at her to catch her shooting a look at the blonde man, a look of warning. The man stepped back again, glaring.

"Daryl's going to be fine too, I heard you saw him," she said sadly, just as softly, "but you should know that he went after Rick at Hilltop — once he was conscious again — and Carl said he hadn't seen Daryl that mad since his brother was left on a rooftop in Atlanta. Did Daryl really throw a bunch of dead squirrels at Rick?" Enid giggled, "I wish I coulda seen that."

Carol stared at her. "How old are you?"

Enid looked confused, narrowing her eyes at Carol. "Fifteen. Why?"

"How long were you out there?"

"You mean alone? Before the Saviors found me?" Carol nodded. "Long enough," she said flatly.

She seemed to lose Carol's interest again, the woman stared down at the magazine she'd been reading and didn't seem to hear anything else she said, not even when Enid was telling her about Tobin sending all her stuff back to Carl's house right as Negan walked in.

"What was that, Angel?" He said, crossing the room and planting a kiss on her cheek. "Carol, I never asked you and I just wasn't fuckin' thinking at all when we were there. Do you have anything back there that you want? Pictures of your girl or anythin'?"

Carol shook her head, tears pricking her eyes as she looked up at him. No pictures. Nothing.

"If you want anything," Enid said, smiling at her, "just let me know. Tobin boxed it all up and it's in your old room." Negan went still, and Carol could feel the emotion rolling off of him. It was like acid on her skin, making her burn, and she looked up at him shaking her head frantically.

"There isn't _anything_ I want back there, not anything," she said, jumping up to grab his arm, begging him to listen to her, to believe her. "I was leaving it all, remember? I was _leaving."_ Negan gave her a measuring look, whatever he'd been feeling was fading quickly, draining right off of him and she was able to take normal breaths again.

He leaned over and kissed her, his tongue invading her mouth, and she ran her hand up his arm and into his hair, her fingers combing through the salt and pepper locks then gripping onto them, giving a little tug that made him groan.

"Gross," Enid muttered, moving farther away and then watching with no small amount of amusement as Dwight let in the other wives, their excited chatter petering off as they noticed Negan and Carol lip-locked together by the couch.

Enid noticed how carefully they had all dressed, how perfectly their makeup was applied and their hair styled, and she chuckled to herself at the jealous rage suffusing all of their pretty, painted faces. Despite Carol's odd behavior and questions, Enid believed she had everything under control here.

"Get out," Negan growled, barely breaking the kiss. "All of you. Out. NOW."

 **— — — —**

When Carol returned to her room a few hours later, she found that someone had ransacked it and taken a knife to all of the pillows she'd embroidered. All of her needlework had been sliced up, even what was currently being worked on. The fabric in the hoop was so shredded, it had been ripped into so many pieces that she couldn't even tell what it was anymore.

She sat on the ground next to her window and cried, clutching the ruined items to her chest and using them to muffle her sobs. There was no solace, she would have no comfort.

She cried until she was spent then crawled into her bed and passed out. She had at least a few hours before Negan might summon her again, and she needed to sleep whenever her body and mind would both allow it. It wasn't often these days.

When she woke up again, it was morning, and there was a new man standing guard outside her door. He said that Negan had taken Dwight and a good-sized group to return Enid to Alexandria, and had left orders that she meet with someone named Carson while he was gone.


	7. Nine Days

**— Nine Days, Sanctuary —**

Carol woke that morning with a feeling of dread in her gut. Something was wrong, very wrong. She couldn't place where the feeling came from but it had plagued her all night, her nightmares worse than normal.

She never slept without nightmares, not since the highway that day when the herd came through and Sophia disappeared over the guardrail and down the embankment. Her last sight of her daughter was her face in a rictus of fear as she ran from monsters. As she ran _away_. Whatever Carol had told herself, her little girl never trusted her mother to be able to save her from monsters: not those under her bed, not the one _in_ her mother's bed, and certainly not the rotting corpses that now dogged every step and every breath they took.

When Carol slept — _when_ she slept — she dreamt of Sophia. Memories before and after, from her difficult birth to her tragic death, every moment where Carol could have acted, could have spoken, could have done _something_ and possibly interrupted the cycle of fear and violence she'd been born into, and yet she never did. In her sleep, Carol got to fail her daughter, over and over, in a constant replay. A thousand different moments, a thousand failures.

Yet somehow, last night was worse.

Negan had returned close to nightfall, in a rage. He'd taken Enid back to Alexandria and something had happened, she didn't know what and he wouldn't speak of it, but the blonde man was not with the other men — the one who carried Daryl's crossbow. He took her back to his room, and he fucked her, and then he sent her away with her new guard and a shout to bring back Sherry when the man returned. She stood beneath a scalding shower and scrubbed her skin raw, then sat by her window and began to embroider a new pillowcase to replace the ones destroyed. She fell asleep eventually, waking up restless and confused, unable to place the feeling of dread or remember her dream. All she knew was that Sophia wasn't in it this time, she'd dreamt of something else. Something somehow _worse._ Given what she'd survived, she couldn't imagine what that could possibly be, yet somehow it was.

 **— — — —**

It hit her mid-morning, hit her like a fist to her gut, something she hadn't felt in so long she'd forgotten exactly how it felt to have all the air leave her in a burst, have agony explode like a fucking grenade inside her belly, leaving her doubled-over and retching while it rippled out and every muscle convulsed at once. She had forgotten how it felt to have a fist strike her with such precision that it drove her to her knees gasping, unable to form thoughts let alone words, as her entire being recoiled from the pain. She had forgotten, just like she had forgotten her dream, until she saw Negan sauntering in her direction, Lucille swinging lazily in his grip, and she _remembered._

Last night, as he grunted on top of her with his face buried in her shoulder and she didn't need to even pretend to be present, she'd let her eyes wander around the room. They kept returning to Lucille, settled into her rack for the night, and she'd look then look away. She'd find herself looking again, but look away. Her eyes would become locked onto that bat so she'd let her lids fall closed and move her eyes away before opening them again, but unless she concentrated on _not_ looking, she couldn't seem to stop her eyes from drifting back. Then Negan was done and he was done with _her_ for the night and she was so grateful for the reprieve that she left without trying to solve the mystery of that bat, but now here it was, as vivid in her mind as it has been in the dim light of the room last night. He strutted toward her as proud as a peacock without any hesitation, and she saw again that bat in its rack, in the dim light of the room as her eyes wouldn't stay away: the barbed wire clogged with gore and the dried remains of a thin rivulet of the red blood of the living. Dead blood didn't run like that.

Someone had died yesterday, someone had died at Alexandria when Negan delivered Enid back to her people, and by the smugness of his grin and the swagger in his step, she _knew_ who it was. She just knew. The thing inside her, thin as glass, that kept a piece of her whole and safe and separate, it exploded. The blast shredded her apart on the inside, leaving her hollow and torn even as she smiled at him and leaned forward to kiss his cheek. A dead thing pretending to be alive.

 **— Nine Days, ASZ —**

"A fucking tiger though? How… how does one go about finding a TIGER?"

Daryl slouched down farther in his seat as Jesus laughed at Rosita's disbelief. They were pulling up to the gates of Alexandria, having been gone for two days, and he was tired. He needed to be away from people. He needed… fuck. What he needed was so far out of reach she might as well be on another planet. But not for long, not if everyone did what they were supposed to do.

What he couldn't get past, and it wasn't for lack of trying, was the realization that there were so many more people eking out some kind of life in this desolate world than he'd ever imagined. It was only a matter of months ago that they'd been walking that road between Georgia and D.C. thinking they were the only living things left, only to have Aaron drag them kicking and screaming back into what passes for civilization. Then came Jesus, and Hilltop, and now The Kingdom and a half dozen other small communities that Ezekiel was sending delegates off to in hopes of rallying them against Negan and his Saviors. "Delegates"…that was the fucking word _King_ Ezekiel used as if they were sovereign nations he was allied with and not a few dozen people squatting in a boarded up Motel 6, a handful in a boarded up train station, and a surprisingly thriving community that took over a boarded up shopping mall of all things, growing crops on the roof and leveraging the contents of a big box pet store to train hunting and guard dogs. _That_ was a place he wouldn't mind allying with in the future, he missed hunting with a good hound — scent or sight — and had once upon a time dreamt of getting his hands on a pup and raising it up as his own.

His daydreams were cut off abruptly. They'd been idling at the gate waiting for it to open for a long time. Too long. No one was on duty, no one was on watch. Walkers they'd caught the attention of on their way in were beginning to catch up to them, congregating on the street and staggering toward the RV sitting like a big white lollypop, crunchy on the outside but chewy in the middle. Rick had that crazy-eyed look he got when Carl and Jude were out of sight and beyond his reach. Michonne looked back at Daryl with wide eyes and pursed lips and he knew what she was asking. He scowled at her but still got up, opening the door and swinging up onto the roof of the RV, his injured shoulder a giving a little in the effort and making him wince, but from that vantage he could see the streets were empty but lights burned in the infirmary. He tapped the roof of the RV twice with the stock of his rifle before slinging it over his shoulder and dashing forward to the edge, kicking off and making a leap for the top of the wall. He caught hold of the corner of the scaffolding that held up the watch platform and was able to climb over and then climb down, getting the gate open and closed again, the RV inside, just as the bleeding edge of the walker pack reached them. His arm was rubbery now, overstrained and weak, but everyone was inside and he stood in the open door of the vehicle as they slowly drove it deeper into the safe zone, weapons hanging out of windows like porcupine quills on a dog muzzle.

They made it around the pond and almost to the doors of the infirmary before anyone appeared. It was Olivia, and she was weeping as she stumbled toward them, Rick throwing it into Park and they all piled out into the street in varying degrees of panic. She threw herself at Aaron, sobbing incoherently. Rick motioned to Michonne who nodded, and he took off at a run for his house while Rosita rushed into the infirmary to lend her assistance. All the rest of them could get out of their quartermaster was _He was here, he came here, and he killed them! HE KILLED THEM!_

Michonne started to sprint towards where Rick had disappeared just moments before, convinced she'd find him broken and kneeling over the corpses of his kids when he emerged from inside the house, Judith in his arms and Carl and Enid trailing after. She paused, hand on her heart, then looked over to where Daryl was entering Aaron's house, the man holding up Olivia with his heart in his throat while he waited on the fate of his partner. Daryl was out moments later, his wave giving Aaron permission to breathe again. "Olivia, calm yourself," he said gently, "we need you to explain."

In great gasping sobs, she uttered three names: Tobin, Spencer, and Abe. Daryl felt a familiar sensation, like a knife to the gut, as Rosita and Sasha emerged from the infirmary, the latter collapsing onto the stairs and hunching over as Rosita crossed back to them, tears coursing down her cheeks. "It's Abe," she said, her fingernails cutting gouges in her arms as she tried to keep control over herself. "He's still alive, but — Negan — he has a skull fracture — he took a hit — tried to save Tobin — Negan beat Tobin with the bat — made them all watch — " she leaned down and threw up onto the pavement, ended up on her hands and knees crying as Michonne held back her hair. "Spencer… he… he _gutted_ him."

 **— — — —**

It took time to figure out where everyone else was, and why no one was on guard. Most of the residents were in the church — all of the original Alexandrians along with Father Gabriel — with Morgan attempting to keep things calm and rational in the face of the panic over the public executions. Eugene, Sasha, and Olivia had been doing whatever they could for Abe, Eugene using his prodigious intellect and Dr. Denise's medical books to attempt treatment alongside Sasha's limited training as a firefighter. The best that could be said was that Abe had survived 18 hours under their care. Rosita had more training and more experience, but Abe needed a doctor, and Jesus was very quickly on his way back to Hilltop to bring Dr. Carson back with him. That Carl had refused to leave either Judith or Enid, even to go on guard duty, was a source of great confusion to Rick, Michonne, and Daryl until Carl led them into garage where Dwight was handcuffed and bound inside an empty chest freezer, a very small hole providing his only source of air. Daryl was ten seconds away from putting an end to the man when Enid stopped him, shouting that she was a Savior and that she and Dwight were their only chance against Negan. They left Dwight where he was, choosing to question the girl first and try to make sense of the situation, and the five of them and Aaron and Eric were gathered back in the living room.

Enid sat back on the couch, as sullen as she was shamefaced in light of being a goddamn spy in their midst, while Carl, beside her, sat forward and attempted with some earnestness to defend the girl. "She saved me and Jude, dad," he said, holding Rick's eye and forcing him to listen. "Negan was looking for me, but Enid got here first and made me take Jude away and hide in some tunnel that runs underneath here. She saved us both, and then she told me everything."

"Or at least what she claims is everythin'," Rick scoffed, glaring at the girl, his feathers ruffled by her trickery. By not seeing through it all. He sat on the coffee table in front of them, his arms crossed.

"I believe her," Carl said, staring his father in the eye levelly. "And you need to listen to what she has to say. And what _he_ has to say."

"Why's he here, and why's he still breathin'?" Daryl asked, calmer than anyone expected.

"He despises Negan," Enid said, focusing on Daryl. "Negan took his wife away, made her his the way he does, makes it seem like they have a choice. When Dwight tried to escape with her and her sister, Negan called it an _act of infidelity_ , and carried out the sentence by putting a hot iron to Dwight's face. If he touches her, or even spends time with her alone, the punishment is death. Some of the wives, they want to be there, they like the privileges they get, but not Sherry."

"And not Carol." Daryl said flatly, staring steadily at the girl who didn't respond. She stared back at him, shaking her head. "Not. Carol." He said again, daring her to disagree, and she finally erupted.

"YES! She is! She's one of them now, I'm telling you." Enid was crying but she looked determined. They had to listen to her, to understand that going against Negan could end up killing _all_ of them and for what? Carol didn't even want to leave.

Rick leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees, "What makes you say that, sweetheart?" he asked patiently, but his tone and his words infuriated her. He wouldn't be listening to anything she said, he'd already made up his mind about her. She glared daggers at him, thinking about Ron. Jessie. Sam. They'd been good to her, and now they were all dead, every one of them, because of him, and she hadn't blamed him for it until just this moment.

Michonne watched the girl tense up, an ugly look in her eye. She had something in her right hand and her fist was clenched so tight around it, her fingers were shaking like they were vibrating. She loved Rick, she really did, and she usually respected the hell out of the man, but sometimes…sometimes she thought that he was as dense as a rock, especially when it came to women. He had that _attitude_ of small town authority that she used to bump up against all the time before the turn, where "different" meant "bad" and she was all kinds of different. He was looking at Enid as if she was a little girl, not a survivor, not an equal, but as if Judith suddenly stood up and began to harangue him. It was the wrong approach to take with _anyone_ these days, let alone a teenage girl who had just proven herself to be smarter, more devious, and more ruthless than anyone she knew… anyone, that is, except Carol.

Michonne huffed out her breath in frustration. If Rick tried to deal with Enid the same way he dealt with Carol, he'd be lucky to make it through the night without getting his throat slit. Dense. As. A. Rock. "Rick, I think you need to go with Carl and see about Dwight," she said quietly, giving him a steady and unwavering look. He glanced over, annoyed, turned back toward Enid, then stilled and looked back at her. He knew that expression. He eyebrows shot up and he shook his head at her. His mouth tensed, his eyes sweeping over Daryl, Aaron, Enid, Carl, and finally back to her, then he shot to his feet and stormed from the room with his son in his wake, Carl glancing back at her once from the doorway before trailing after him.

She let out a gusty sigh and then sat down in Rick's place on the table in front of Enid. She studied the girl for several minutes, and to her credit Enid neither flinched, nor became jumpy or nervous, nor expressed any discomfort under Michonne's penetrating gaze. She stared right back at her, expressionless, her tears drying up and her hand relaxing by increments until Michonne judged she'd calmed down enough to explain herself.

"How can you stand it?" Enid asked, breaking the silence and causing Michonne to twitch in surprise. She hadn't expected the girl to take the lead.

"Stand what?" she asked, confident she knew but wanting to hear what the girl said.

"Him. His attitude. His _officer daddy_ approach to everyone." Daryl snorted, then actually began to chuckle at that, and she couldn't help it, her solemn expression cracked and a smile emerged. She shook her head at Daryl. "You're not helping."

"I ain't tryin' to, and she ain't wrong," he said, slouching against the back of the chair. If nothing else, it was good to see some of the tension leave him, he'd been as taut as a bowstring for a week. He nudged Enid's knee with his foot so she looked over at him. "Took almost two years before he stopped talkin' to _me_ like that, and I can kill him with my pinkie finger. Good luck with that."

"You think I can't?" she said, no pretense and no braggadocio in her tone. His eyebrow shot up at the same time the corner of his mouth did.

"Touché" he muttered, then considered her silently for about ten seconds before saying "So what makes you think Carol is one of them now?" She looked at him, pityingly, and he felt a surge of resentment towards the girl for thinking she knew _anything_ about anything having to do with him and Carol. His eyes went cold and he growled "You need to tread lightly here, little girl. Don't presume to know either of us."

She flinched but backed down, shrugging and glancing back at Michonne. "You're right, I only know what I see and what I hear. What I _saw_ was a woman totally uninterested in anything I had to say about any of you, including _you_ Daryl, who would rather read a magazine than hear about what's happened since she's been gone. What I _heard_ was her telling Negan she didn't care about anything she left behind here, that she was leaving anyway." It was his turn to flinch, his face losing some of its vitality. Michonne felt how deep that cut him, where it would bleed out silently and unseen. "What I _saw_ was someone who has settled in, who spends all her time sitting in her room embroidering fucking pillowcases rather than _doing_ anything. She doesn't have _anything_ in her room that could be used as a weapon, she doesn't have _any_ plans to go against him. The amount of time she spends alone with him, she could have _done_ something ten times over by now!"

Michonne's hackles went up immediately, and she was about to jump to Carol's defense and tell this little shit exactly how the real world works when Daryl held up his hand and stopped her. He sat forward in the chair and looked at Enid intensely. "She's embroidering?" He asked, his voice strained. "You sure?"

Enid nodded, confused, her lip curling up in confused disdain. "THAT'S your question? From all of that?"

"No," he said, the tension returning to his body, "that's just one of them. You said she was readin' a magazine? Do you know what it was? Do you know what the article was?"

Enid wrinkled her brow and pulled back a little, looking at Michonne who regarded her steadily. If the samurai woman was taking him seriously than maybe she didn't fully understand the situation. "I may have exaggerated. She wasn't reading a magazine, she was staring at a magazine cover. It was on the table in front of us and she wouldn't look at me or talk to me, she just stared at this picture."

"WHAT WAS THE PICTURE?" He said, his voice cracking a little. He was never this loud, she'd never heard his voice raised above a mumble since they got here.

"Just some movie actress. Really young looking, brown hair. Apparently known for her shoulders…?"

"Did she say _anythin'_ to you when you saw her?"

"No… yes. I was telling her about you, about Carl telling me how you threw dead squirrels at Rick." Michonne's eyebrows shot up and she glanced over at him then at Aaron when he ignored her. Aaron nodded, giving a little chuckle. "She got a weird look on her face and asked me how old I was. It creeped me out. It was like she was thinking I was like Maggie's sister or something."

He spat out a few choice curses and then glared at everyone in the room individually, meeting their eyes, before exploding, "For the last fuckin' time, nothin' happened between me and Beth. She was a fuckin' kid and I ain't no kiddie-diddler. Jesus fucking Christ, why would you even let me stay here if you thought I was havin' sex with underage girls? That's fuckin' sick."

Michonne shrugged. "They let asshole Pete beat up on Jessie because he was a doctor. Why not?"

Daryl closed his eyes and shook his head, disgusted by the thought that they all believed he was capable of something like that and found a way to justify it because he was useful. Aaron cleared his throat, looking at Daryl sadly. "Not everyone thinks that of you, not even close. People gossip, even after the world ends people still spread rumors and want to know dirt about others, especially when a group of strangers show up and one of them is tall, dark, handsome, brooding, and mysterious." He grinned at Daryl who rolled his eyes. "I can tell you that I heard the rumor about Maggie's sister too, but anyone that came to me looking for dirt just got the truth: the only woman you ever said more than two words about was Carol. If you were involved with anyone, it was her." He blushed a little, shooting Daryl a guilty look. "I might have also implied that you weren't interested in women at all… IN MY DEFENSE," he said throwing up his hands and talking over Daryl who began to sputter, "it might have been wishful thinking at first, but later it seemed like a good way to keep some of those harpies from bothering you."

Daryl glared at him then nodded, the corner of his mouth twitching. "Thanks for havin' my back, Aaron," he said, deliberately, and Michonne thought it MUST have been a trick of the light, it couldn't possibly be—

"Daryl? Did you just– did you just make a dirty joke and WINK at him?" He blushed but didn't deny it. She reeled back in her seat. What the hell just happened? Had the world gone MAD?

Enid was bored and annoyed with the adult bullshit. She couldn't care less about which old person was fucking whichever old person, all she cared about was stopping them from getting her, and Carl, and Judith, and Maggie and Glenn and their baby killed. The rest of them could all go have a fucking orgy for all she cared, just as long as they didn't bring down any more of Negan's fucking wrath. "HEY!," she said loudly, "who gives a fuck? Why does it matter what Carol was reading or what she said to me? It sure as fuck didn't have to do with her getting out of there. SHE DOESN'T WANT TO LEAVE." She glared at Daryl, shaking her head. "FUCK. I didn't want to say anything, but I'm pretty sure she's fucking IN LOVE with NEGAN. The two of them are like fucking horny TEENAGERS together."

Daryl winced but shook his head. "Trust me, that ain't it at all. You said she asked how old you were? Did she say anything else?"

Michonne watched Enid glance down at her hand before she looked up and answered him. "She asked me how long I was out there. Before the Saviors found me."

He gave a low whistle and collapsed back in his seat. He looked at Michonne, breathing out "Sophia." Michonne's eyes widened and her brows shot up. Enid was looking back and forth between them, confused, and she didn't like being confused.

"Who the fuck is Sophia?"

"Her daughter," he said, tersely. "You always had such a colorful vocabulary? You even fuckin' SOUND like him."

She ignored that last part. She could tone it down when needed, it just didn't matter anymore. "I thought her daughters were named Lizzie and Mickey," she said and he flinched.

"Mika," Michonne corrected distractedly. "Those were girls she met after, in the prison. Daryl? I never saw Carol embroider anything. She didn't even like doing the sewing at the prison, used to pawn it off on the Woodbury ladies."

"Yeah, she didn't do it much after the farm. But she told me once that Ed was a tightwad and wouldn't give her much money to buy Sophia clothes, so she'd pick up stuff at goodwill and then alter it, make it pretty for the girl. She'd do shit like embroider flowers on it or add lace."

"Yeah, flowers," said Enid, looking at Daryl. "That's what she was sewing, on everything. Just flowers, over an over." She glanced down at her hand again, her voice getting thin. She looked at him, ashamed. "I… I got mad, when she didn't seem to care about Carl or Judith or Maggie. I got mad and I went to her room when she was away, and I looked for any weapons or shit, any sign she might have been planning to DO something, but all I found was the embroidery. So I destroyed it. All of it. I took my knife to it and I just… I cut it up. Here—" she said, thrusting her fist at him and dropping a scrap of cloth in his lap. "I brought it back to prove to you that she doesn't care."

Daryl reached down with shaking fingers and unfolded the crumpled piece of fabric. On it, in tiny, perfect stitches, was a single Cherokee Rose.

He looked up at Michonne, devastated, his finger tracing the outline of the flower over and over. "She's not gonna last much longer in there," he said, desperation tinging his voice. "She's tryin' not to, but she's giving up."

—

 _No beta this time, I couldn't get it to her in time, and I know the chapter suffered for it. Got some stuff going on irl, and I need some extra time with next chapter so I'm not going to post the next one on my usual schedule next Monday. I'm not yet sure if I'll post it later that week or skip to the following Monday. I'm sorry. It'll still be complete by the premiere, even if I have to double-post to get it there, but this schedule change is unavoidable._


	8. Nine Days, Then the Tenth

**\- Nine Days, ASZ -**

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Enid snarled, pushing her way in front of Rick and getting between him and Sasha. Rick had just returned with Carl when the woman came busting in, screaming at Rick about Abe, Negan, even something about letting Carol back in the group which Enid didn't understand but also didn't really give a fuck about either. But screaming that it was Rick's fault that Negan clocked Abe? That wasn't right. If she thought that this was anything but an unstoppable juggernaut bearing down on them, she was kidding herself. "You have NO idea who you're dealing with. There are a lot of reasons NOT to go after Carol, but this? This isn't one of them. Abe should already be DEAD!"

"Now c'mon, calm down," Rick said, trying to manage her just like he'd been trying to soothe Sasha moments before. It was so infuriating how he constantly tried to placate them, treating them like bombs needing to be disarmed. Sure she was still a teenager, but she'd survived in this hellscape all on her own, for a long damn time, and that deserved some goddamn recognition. Age didn't matter anymore. Negan got that, why couldn't Rick?

She swung around, her cheeks burning so hot she thought she'd be going full-on Ghost Rider any second, giving Michonne a heads up that he was five seconds away from a knife to the kidney _again_. Michonne looked back at her with a shrug, she'd handled him about as much as she was planning to already. Enid turned on Rick again, spitting "Back the fuck off, Rick. I'm not your fucking kid. Don't fucking tell me to calm down, I'm the only one here who knows what we're up against." She deliberately turned away from him, talking only to Sasha and Michonne now. "Negan was ready to kill two of you that night on the road. TWO. Abe was the biggest threat once Dwight shot Daryl, and he was looking for the one that would HURT the most. I took on a debt I may never be able to pay off, but CARL was the only one of you who was safe. The _only_ one. I think…" her fury drained away, leaving her hollow. "I think he would have killed Maggie if he hadn't figured out Carol, if she hadn't gone with him."

To her credit, Sasha's rage cooled quickly, replaced with a sick kind of despair. Enid knew that feeling. Her big, soft eyes looked intently at Enid, looking to figure her out, and after a time Sasha nodded, grimacing. "She saved us again," she said ruefully, collapsing into one of the armchairs and resting her forehead in one hand. "GOD I want to HATE that woman," she mumbled into her hand, "but she keeps doing this shit."

Enid was only marginally curious where all the bad blood came from between her and Carol, but at least Sasha wasn't blinded by inconsequential things like age, or that she'd been spying on them on behalf of the enemy. "She might not have wanted to go, but she's fine where she is, safe and sound. No one inside these walls can say the same. I don't know why Negan killed Tobin, he wasn't with you at the radio tower so it doesn't make any sense to me, and he was a _good_ man. He shouldn't have went like that," she said, shaking her head, "but killing him was just the start."

It was Enid's turn to sit down heavily, an Atlas bearing truths invisible to the rest of them. Her eyes darted from face to face, willing them to _get it_ , to understand how much danger they were all in, but Rick was a problem. He lived in a perpetual state of denial, even with Michonne acting as his tour guide to reality. He was worse than the most sheltered Alexandrian when it came down to it, at least they had excuses for being so obstinately blind to their own ignorance.

She latched onto an idea, an alternative approach _maybe_ more relatable to some of them other than Rick, because she'd pretty much given up on him. She was already resigning herself that when Negan came for ASZ, she'd make sure Carl and Judith got out and just hope the rest could take care of themselves. She couldn't save all of them. Not for the first time that day, she wished Glenn and Maggie were there. Guaranteed that he'd get it. She had no idea what any of the rest of them were like _before_ , what they did for fun, but then again she never expected to bond with Negan over video games either.

"Any of you ever played any of the Civ games? PC or console?" Only Carl nodded, and she almost gave up entirely. She raised one eyebrow at Daryl, but he shrugged and curled his lip up, which she translated as "bitch, nobody got time for that shit!" then really kinda wished he'd actually say that. She'd pay cash money and two cans of Dinty Moore to hear those words come out of Daryl. After a moment or two, Michonne squinted at her, sat down across from her again and nodded reluctantly and Enid sighed in relief. "You know how to win?"

Michonne nodded again, slowly, her brow wrinkling. "I mostly played Civ Rev. You do a land grab in the beginning, try to get all the resources you can, then hunker down and build up defenses. Concentrate on developing tech, then start building units. Easiest win is domination."

Enid nodded. "You ever win through Culture?"

Michonne snorted. "Sure, I've done it to get the achievements, but only as the Greeks or Romans. You just can't win at high difficulties with the traditional Culture leaders because the AI is too smart and puts you up against Catherine the Great or Genghis Khan. A free cathedral can't do shit against aggressive military leaders."

Enid nodded at her. "In the old world, Negan was a history teacher and coach and he _loved_ playing Civ, all versions, but Civ Rev was the one I knew. We talk about it all the time, we've both played all the leaders and all the difficulties." She smiled a little, as if chatting with Negan about video games was a fond memory for her. "He even used mods for four in his classes, letting his kids play through actual events. Told me once that we'd all be speaking Aztec right now if it wasn't for chickenpox. Before that he was a football coach at some college in Florida, and what he cares about is his team and winning but- "

She started to say more but Sasha fell back with a strangled gurgle, looking at Enid like she'd just punched a kitten. "NEGAN," she whispered. "He was Ty's coach. Ty _loved_ him."

"Well where's this Ty? Negan would kill his whole army for one of his players or students. Oh. Yeah. We're in the goddamn apocalypse so if this Ty is dead then it's all meaningless. You might not get tortured before he kills you if you can get him a memo in advance. Now can I finish? Thanks..." She paused, turning back to Michonne. "His favorite leader in Civ Rev is Genghis Khan...do you remember what Khan's advantage is?"

"Any barbarian village you conquer becomes one of your cities."

Enid nodded at her, letting her think on that for a moment.

"Shiiiiit," Michonne said suddenly, leaning back and looking up at the ceiling. "Costs too much to _build_ cities, cuts into production and you get stretched too thin if you use your own resources to expand, but as Khan you can spread out over the entire fucking map, get a toehold in everywhere at no cost to you. That's what he's doing, isn't it? He's exploring the map and turning every settlement into a real-life converted barbarian village until no one is independent anymore, everyone's production supports his conquests."

Enid nodded again, with a sigh of relief.

Rick's head was bouncing back and forth between the two of them, frustration making him snap. "Negan's playing a damn game?"

Enid sighed. "Of course he is. You think any of this shit is real? You're all just pieces moving around a map, X's and O's on a whiteboard, and right now, you hold a resource that he wants. This place? Alexandria? This is where a fucking _king_ would live, and all he has to do to take it in one piece is break you down then kill you off. One by one. By this time next year, every single one of you will be dead and Judith will be calling him Daddy." That was low, but it worked. Rick looked sick, he looked sick and dangerous. Threatening his kids was the only reliable way to motivate the man.

He started laying out a change in their plans, and she was pleased to hear that he was listening to at least some of what she had to say. Daryl and then Aaron both tried interrupting him, tried to bring him back, but he wasn't having any of it. She waited, letting them argue, letting it sink in that in the grand scheme of things that not a single fucking one of them mattered to Negan, he had no use for anyone that wouldn't take a knee, first time, every time. He'd win through domination, through strategically removing anyone that wouldn't follow the rules or wouldn't follow him, and he wouldn't think twice about it. Going in now would just get them killed that much quicker, and in payback he'd kill every other person in Alexandria along with them. Probably Hilltop too. Right now he was trying to convert them, keep them working for him while he systematically takes out the threats, but he has enough loyal followers to hold Sanctuary if he has to move on ASZ early, could even put his own up at Hilltop if he needed to. That would thin his population out, cost him some growth, and there aren't enough rabid loyalists to fill all three so it wouldn't be his first choice, but anyone he can't convert or that puts up a fight is as good as dead. Anyone involved with the massacre at the radio tower was already marked, but push him too far and he'd raze the entire compound and repopulate it with his own.

That's how you win as Ghengis Khan.

None of them were getting anywhere, they just kept going round and round until Daryl'd had enough. He raised one hand up, silencing Rick, and turned to her. "What do you think we should do, Enid?" Daryl said, looking at her as if what she had to say was vitally important to these proceedings, and all of a sudden she figured it out. Sure, some girls might like the motorcycle and attitude but he never really did much for her until that moment, not until he looked at her like what she had to say mattered. She never really got the fuss before.

She found herself blushing, which just embarrassed her, and that made her flush even redder. "You need to wait. Let Dwight and me go back to Sanctuary and wait for us to figure out who we can rally on the inside. You need to show him you can follow the rules and maybe, _maybe_ some of you will survive. Raising an army and going in for Carol? He'll make an example out of Alexandria. He'll kill everyone here and not just the troublemakers." She looked around at all of them, avoiding looking at Daryl. "You've got time right now, he won't come back here himself for a few weeks. If you seem to be toeing the line then, he might not kill any of you right away. He wants you to be happy little worker bees up until he's ready to move in, and we'll be in a better position to strike at him. Dwight and me, we're on the inside. We're the reason this will WORK."

Daryl eyed her, silently, right up until she was about to start squirming, then said quietly, calmly, almost kindly: "The problem with your plan is that I don't trust you. I sure as shit don't trust _Dwight_." He turned from her as his voice began to rise, becoming rougher, angrier, but desperate too, always on the edge of begging as he focused on Rick. "And Carol won't last. She ain't gonna last a few days let alone a few weeks. We need to go in NOW. We've got Jesus and Ezekiel rallying everyone up, gettin' people in place. We can do this!"

She was so close to convincing them. So. Fucking. Close. But then Daryl had to interfere and now Rick was nodding and she was losing him. "FUCK CAROL," Enid shrieked, her moment of weakness for the man passing. She was on her feet and up in his face, jabbing a finger at him. "SHE'S NOT WORTH ALL YOUR LIVES. SHE'S WITH HIM NOW."

Daryl didn't blink, didn't move a muscle, didn't even flinch when she got too close. He shook his head at her, and in the last five seconds she'd lost all the ground she'd gained. "That's where you're wrong. You don't get it. She ain't with him," he said flatly, an edge to his voice, "and she _is_ worth it because every one of us owes her. We. Owe. HER. She don't deserve what he's doing to her. What _we_ did to her. And there's no fuckin' way that I'm gonna let her suffer because the fuckhead that killed Dr. Denise might have a better plan. Decision's been made," he said, looking at Rick coldly, "and you ain't changin' the plan." He turned and stormed out of the room, heading for the garage and Dwight, the others rushing after him yelling at him not to kill the man, at least not yet.

Enid burst into the garage behind the rest, convinced he was going to go all methed-out-redneck on Dwight and she'd be fucked, but he had pulled the man out of the freezer and had both hands wringing up in the collar of Dwight's shirt. He was squeezing just enough to start cutting into his neck and his air supply, bending the man back over the chest freezer, but not enough to kill him. Yet. "New plan, fuckhead," he growled, right up in Dwight's face, enraged, with spittle flying. "You're gonna run back home and deliver a message to Carol, then you're going to shut your fucking mouth and wait until we show up. If you help us take Negan down, we might let you live. You don't help us? You betray us to him? You'll die slow an' ugly, legs and arms broken and staked to the ground, screaming as walkers eat your guts out of your body. You get me?" He shook the man, slamming him back against the freezer over and over until Dwight managed to get out a sound that was as close as they'd get to an agreement. "Good answer," he said, dropping him but not stepping back. He reached over to where his crossbow was sitting, where Dwight had set it down when Carl had forced him at gunpoint to stand still and get tied up, and he yanked a bolt out of the attached quiver, handing it to Dwight. "You give her this. Tell her it's from me. She'll know what it means." Dwight nodded dumbly, then Daryl reared back and punched him in the face. "That's for my shoulder, fuckhead." He cocked his arm back and slammed his fist into Dwight's face again, and then again, his head rocking back to strike the freezer door. "And that's for Denise. We're gonna tell her girlfriend that Negan killed her, otherwise Tara would rip you to PIECES, you piece of shit. You better hope she never finds out differently." Dwight nodded again, blood streaming from his broken nose, and Daryl turned away, scooping up his crossbow and stalking toward the door. "I'm goin' to talk to Ezekiel, make sure they're ready," he tossed over his shoulder as he went for his pack. "Somebody get that fuck close to Sanctuary and then drop his bitch ass off to walk." 

**\- Nine Days, Sanctuary -**

She'd hoped he was dead, the blonde man. When he wasn't with Negan, Carol had hoped that meant he was dead too. But he wasn't.

He came ambling up to the gates as the sun was going down, his face a mess of bruises and the break in his nose causing it to swell up all potato-like. Negan made her go out to the courtyard with him to greet the man and hear his explanation, and for a second she thought maybe Negan would kill him with how suspicious he seemed to be about the blonde man's whereabouts. But then the man told him a convincing story about getting knocked off the truck on the way back, falling into a drainage ditch and getting knocked out cold hitting a culvert, and barely making it out alive before the geeks found him. Negan welcomed him back and put him right back on duty guarding her. Told him he could go see the doctor later, after she was in bed for the night. The man just nodded, and circled around to stand behind her.

Negan dismissed her then, told her to get some sleep because they had a big day tomorrow. He didn't tell her what it was. She thought he might have been more willing to talk to her about things like that a few days ago, but he seemed different towards her now: a little conciliatory, a little tentative, like she was a fragile thing teetering on the edge. Maybe that's how she looked, but she wasn't at risk of breaking. She was already broken. She was already so far beyond broken now, she was a hollow piece of meat going through all the motions.

The blonde man followed her to her room. She unlocked the door, pushing it open, and she felt him move closer behind her. She tensed, sucking in a breath, curling her hand into a fist ready to plant it into his already broken nose. He made a noise, a huff of sound, and she felt something being pressed against her hand. "Take it," he hissed, "A message from your friend." Her hand unclenched reflexively and she grasped on to whatever it was, then she felt it in her hand, the familiar cool, smooth aluminum cylinder that made up the shaft of Daryl's crossbow bolts. It felt like a red-hot iron spike being driven through her chest, and she gasped for air and fell against the doorframe, clutching at it as if the floor was tilting beneath her trying to spill her off into space.

She didn't know why Rick would give this man one of Daryl's crossbow bolts to give to her, let alone why he would have spoke to the man at all without killing him outright, but she thought it was a particularly cruel gesture for him to send her a memento like this. Was he just trying to drive home that Daryl was gone now? Was this his way of blaming her for what Negan did? If so, it was almost laughable that Rick would think there was any blame left that she _hadn't_ already taken on. Every little bit of this was her own fault, hers alone, and knowing that the world kept turning even though Daryl Dixon was no longer in it, well that was more than she could handle.

As far as she was concerned, there were no more rotations around the sun, she'd been plunged into absolute darkness and no sunrise would ever pierce the veil.

She pushed herself away from the door and slammed it shut behind her. 

**\- Ten Days. Somewhere Else. -**

"Pull over," Negan said, his voice tinged with something suspicious. If she didn't know better, she would've thought it sounded like...delight? Anticipation? Eagerness? He was tilted back away from her in his seat, giving her that laconic stare of his, as Wes steered the vehicle to one side of the road and pulled to a stop. The other, heavier vehicles could still get around them but idled in place, waiting.

He stared at her for longer than a moment, eyes never creeping away from her own as she met his gaze with one of placid affection. She let a small smile curl up one side of her mouth, which might have been what he was waiting for because once he had it, he was in motion. Flinging open the door, he stepped down, Lucille in hand, and strutted back along the line of trailing vehicles. One by one, as he passed, they started up again and headed forward down the road, leaving just the Humvee and a single pickup truck with a half dozen men in it.

Dwight peeled himself out of the passenger seat and approached Negan. The two of them spoke, heads bowed slightly together, for a good minute before she got tired of watching and turned back around. Wes was rotated almost ninety degrees in his seat, staring at her, his normal expression of cold indifference replaced with something darker, angrier. Hateful. She met his eye and held it, her own face as blank and impenetrable as a window shuttered from the inside. Blood suffused his cheeks and a vein pulsed in his forehead as he tried to intimidate her into something — submission? — and her non-response only infuriated him. It was a lost cause on his part: her eyes might be glued to his but her mind was miles away, back in Georgia, thinking of the night she spent with Daryl in the women's shelter. They'd both been beat to hell by crashing the car, exhausted and dirty and traumatized by the last few days of pecan groves and railroad cars, but they'd been together. Within eyesight, assured of each other's relative safety and continuation of drawing breath, and most days that was all either of them needed.

It was enough to know the other was still breathing.

In her memory he was lying next to her, radiating heat, and despite the turmoil in her soul and the whirlpool of anguish that was attempting to suck her down and drown her, she was anchored to this life by his presence. She wished, in hindsight, she'd rolled over and kissed him then because maybe they'd still be in that room now, kissing and touching and loving. She wished she'd at least turned in place and looked at him, memorized him in that moment, while she told him how very important he was to her. That he was the force that kept her heart pumping the blood in her veins, that kept her legs moving when every muscle screamed in agony. That it was him that kept her from slipping beneath the surface and letting despair fill her throat and block her airway. She wished she had told him, just once, that without him she would choke to death on her own regrets. But she didn't. She fell asleep. And now he was dead because a sociopath with trust issues wanted her all to himself.

She was at sea again, but the stars were shuttered in the sky and no wind filled her sails. She was adrift in a vast ocean with no possibility of rescue, not anymore, and the only thing left to do was to let herself sink below into the cold, lonely finality of darkness.

The door beside her opened and Negan reached for her hand, tugging her out of the vehicle and leading her across the road, away from the others, down the embankment and towards the tree line. She looked back, once, and saw his men ranged around the vehicles, weapons in hand, watching them with carefully blank faces. Dwight stood slightly apart from the rest, his head rolled back as he studied her from slitted eyes, slouching in place and tapping his index finger on the trigger of his shotgun. It was the last thing she saw before Negan dragged her into the woods and the trees crowded in behind them.

She was quite certain that he was taking her into the woods to kill her, but she didn't care enough to ask him _why now?_ And why like this? Why not in front of an audience where her death could be useful to him? And why did he dress her up in biker's leathers, only slightly too big for her — leather pants and jacket that he'd sent four of his men out to find for her, and only three had come back — telling her to wear them no matter how hot it got because no geek could bite or scratch her through the hide? Why do all that only to kill her now? She just couldn't fathom how his mind worked.

They walked for a few minutes, barely out of earshot of the road, when he stopped abruptly and she plowed into his back. Her full, distracted weight banging into him didn't even signify, his feet were planted in the earth and his body was as unyielding as one of the trees that surrounded them; she might as well have been water crashing against a rock. He glanced over his shoulder at her and grinned, using their linked hands to tug her forward next to him. She looked up at his face, speculatively, and he smiled down on her with a measure of fondness that might have warmed her heart in another time, another place, with another man. If Ed had ever looked at her like this, she suspected her life would have been very different. If Daryl had, she'd probably have combusted in place. But this was Negan, and any tender feelings he might have towards her sprang from deceit, violence, and death. He gave her no choice so she gave him a lie, she gave him a shell of a body to do with what he would while her mind and soul were elsewhere. For whatever reason, that elicited affection from him, care for her and her well-being, and an equally strong impulse to destroy her. He was like a small child, so enraptured with his new puppy that he couldn't stop hugging it even as he squeezed it to death. And she was okay with that now. She was ready to let go. There wasn't anything left to keep her here.

But he didn't bring her here to kill her body, just her soul.

"I saw this place the other day. Got outta the truck to take a leak and saw a flash of white through the trees. Thought it was some fucker watching us so I took off after him but found this place." He said this while wrapping his arms around her, holding her tight against him with her back against his front, and he spoke in a hushed tone as he ran his lips down the curve of her neck breathing shivers against her skin. She stared dumbly ahead, not understanding the change of events, not comprehending what she was seeing here. It was a break in the trees, and a shaft of light pouring down on the last remains of an old fence, crumbling into chunks of rotten wood and rusted iron around the edges but still held up in the middle by the twining glory of a Cherokee rose bush in full bloom, a hundred pure white blossoms exploding from the deep green leaves and tendrils choking the remains of the fence beneath it. "I know you like this flower, you've been stitching it on every fuckin' thing in your room, and I saw this place and though maybe I could make love to my favorite wife surrounded by her favorite flower. Cherokee roses for my Georgia girl, my own Cherokee rose." He whispered the last part, a hot, breathy growl as he turned her in his arms and ducked his head, his mouth seeking hers. He was uncontrolled, insatiable, his hands grasping at the smooth leather cupping her curves, his strong arms lifting her to her tiptoes while his mouth devoured her, but his heat was like a single match trying to burn in a hurricane. His passion, all consuming and as wild and destructive as a forest fire, was turned pitiful and impotent when set against the fathomless depths of her rage, the empty vacuum of her hate.

She let him kiss her, ravage her mouth, as she twisted her arm away and flattened her shoulder so that the sleeve of her jacket slipped down over her hand. Tucked up inside, secured with embroidery floss to the lining, was the crossbow bolt that Dwight had delivered to her as confirmation, a souvenir of Daryl's murder. She'd studied the thing at length, the pointed barb affixed to such a delicate shaft of metal, such a thin length of aluminum that carried a small scrap of steel and turned it into a vehicle for death. When he'd given it to her, she'd looked at him curious and confused, not understanding, and he'd whispered "a message from your friend." He had folded her fingers around it and forced her to conceal it within her shirt, the arrowhead scratching a line across the skin of her belly that would be dotted with small beads of dried blood when she finally noticed it later. Only afterwards did she recall that he pressed his mouth close against her ear to deliver the killing blow, whispering "I'm really sorry to tell you this, but he went to Alexandria to kill your man. No one could stop him, he wouldn't be denied. I saw your friend after, and he sent this to you. Said you'd understand."

She did not cry. She hadn't shed a single tear for Daryl. Dead things don't cry. Instead she broke the shaft down to a reasonable length, ran a stone along the four blades coming to a point to sharpen them, then sewed her weapon into the sleeve of her jacket. There would be time.

There would be time.

And now, clenched together in a clearing in the woods with the distant voices of his men a rough murmur, was that time. She slid it into her hand and broke the kiss, leaning back from him to meet his hungry gaze half-drunk with desire, and thrust the bolt into his neck.

He staggered back from her, eyes wide and panicked, reaching toward the shaft but she still had a grip on it, and she yanked it out again, the barbs on the head tearing open a gaping hole in his flesh that began to gush blood like she'd tapped a mountain-fed spring. He stumbled, falling back against the broken fence, trying to dam the flood but already the knowledge of his own death was hollow in his eyes.

"I'd have stayed with you, done whatever you wanted, without complaint," she said to him, standing aloof as he began to wilt. "I gave my word, and you were good to me in your way, and it was enough for me to know that they were safe. But it wasn't enough for you. You had to destroy everything that came before you. You had to kill him, kill my Daryl." His eyes went wide, and his mouth began to move, but even if he had a voice there was nothing he could say that would matter. Not anymore. "If you had just left Daryl alone, let him live out his time in peace, I could have lived as your whore. I could have lived with myself. But you didn't." His arms fell away from the bloody massacre of his throat and he looked up at her in wonder as too much blood left his body to sustain his life. Numbing cold crept over him and his field of vision narrowed until it was just her face he saw as she knelt next to him, holding his hand, then his vision dimmed as the world went silent and he died tangled up in vines and white roses.

She stayed like that for a time, long enough to hear the familiar rasps and growls of the dead dragging themselves towards the smell of blood, coming from all directions among the trees. She stayed until they were close, so close, until the figure lying next to her began to twitch again as a different kind of hunger filled him, then she held up the pistol she'd liberated from his belt and shot up into the air twice, then again, knowing the sound would bring the dead faster but the living as well. She stayed at his side as he tried to free himself from the grasp of the roses, weak like a newborn kitten trying to reach the warm, living flesh of her body. She blocked the sight of him from his men as they flooded into the clearing and tried to fight off the encroaching dead. They almost succeeded too, but in the chaos no one noticed as she made her way among them, disabling or felling each one as he fought until only their screams lingered as the dead feasted, then she made her rounds again and finished them all — the dead and the living alike — with muffled shots or jabs to the brain. Only then did she notice Dwight, standing in the shadows as Negan's animated corpse began to claw it's way across the forest floor, too driven by starvation to bother getting to his feet, and she let her hands fall to her sides. The buck knife and pistol she'd picked up along the way dropped from her numb fingers and she sagged to her knees, Negan's fingers grasping at her calves, pulling her towards his gaping maw, and she smiled at Dwight with real warmth, eyes sparkling. She gave a slight shrug as if telling him there were worse ways to go as she simply gave up the fight, but he was on them in a heartbeat, plunging his own blade into Negan's ear and finally ending it all.

The glare she shot him, full of disbelief and betrayal, was gentle compared to the gush of vitriol and curses that spilled from her mouth, and she lunged towards him with fists poised. He cold-cocked her in the chin and caught her when her body went limp as her mind went black.

He carried her back to the Humvee, laying her down on the back seat with a great deal of gentleness, bordering on reverence, then returned for Negan, hauling him back and setting him upright in the passenger seat. Lucille was in the next trip, and she was propped up between Negan's feet to rest against his knee. WIth his red scarf pulled up and sunglasses on, he could pass for the living, and Dwight giggled to himself about enacting a "Weekend at Bernie's" scenario with Negan's cold, dead corpse. After he'd gathered up all the guns and knives, machetes and crowbars — any implement of death he could find strewn about the killing field — he plucked one of the biggest, fullest blooms off the rose bush and set it down on the seat next to Carol's head, hoping the sight of a pretty flower would soothe her when she woke.

Then he got in the driver's seat and started up the engine, heading towards Sanctuary. His mind was going a million miles an hour trying to figure out how to take out all of Negan's loyalists, _before_ they figured out that the man was nothing anymore but an 80s movie cliche.

It was a good problem to have. 

**\- AN-**

So...yeah... sorry I disappeared. In the ten (!) months since I last posted, I lost two beloved pets, almost a third, and two beloved people who were important to me. It messed me up.

There's still a couple chapters left to this, mostly written. This story was supposed to get lighter at some point, but I had to throw out a lot that I've written in the past few months because it just kept getting darker. I hope it ends up being worth the wait.

Thank you to all of you who contacted me or posted multiple reviews while I was...on hiatus? Checked out? Depressed as fuck? It meant a lot to know there was still interest.

Anyway, thanks. And new chapters to follow, though I can't commit to a schedule yet. Just promising I WILL finish it.


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